Eternity's Conflict
by Ringshadow
Summary: Lylat has a new home, but new troubles have arisen. The people who are their allies might be their greatest enemies. Meanwhile, on the fringe of the Universe, StarFox is uncovering one of the greatest wonders ever known..
1. Chapter Two: Points of Authority

Chapter Two: Points of Authority

General Pepper yawned, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he wandered into the officer's mess hall, sitting down roughly, not surprised when Nancy pushed a tray over to him she had already set up. "Thanks."

"You look like you've been though the grinder, old love." She pushed his fur out of his eyes gently. They were alone, it was early enough in the morning that only the kitchen staff was present. In fifteen minutes, there would be a breakfast rush, but until then they had the place to themselves.

"Sounds about right…" He sighed. "Leave time doesn't freaking exist anymore, I swear it…"

"Our new allies again?" She continued the preening, her hands finding old routes, smoothing his fur.

"I don't know if they're our allies or our enemies. We've got three cities building on Alpha, two on Beta, but the intel from StarFox and some other sources suggests something completely different then what we know."

"And you want to believe StarFox over the GalFed, right?"

"Like you wouldn't believe. The GalFed is getting us back on our feet, but StarFox have saved us time and time again. I know they wouldn't lie to us."

"It probably doesn't help that you think of Fox as a son."

He chuckled weakly. "No. No, probably not." He sighed, looking at her. "Nancy, why didn't you just divorce me and find yourself a decent husband?"

She smiled. "Because I already had one… I just wasn't ready to admit that yet."

"KISS HIM!"

Both of them jumped, and saw the entire galley crew, which were now clapping and cheering, hanging out the connecting door and watching. Pepper sighed and rolled his eyes, shouting back, "Get back to work you slackers!" Ignoring the continued catcalls, he looked at Nancy. "Let's get out of here."

"Not until you eat, we're not."

"Nag." He laughed and dug in, shaking his head.

Jirest sighed, settling into a chair as the others did. "The GalFed have declared this ship both contaminated and marked it for destruction." He announced, playing with his whole antenna worriedly. "The councils from the Colonies are protesting it as loudly as they can, but they don't have much power. They're being utterly ignored."

"We've had an entire military after us before." Falco remarked.

"Not one this big or this powerful." Peppy said. "We're going to be running for a long time, much as we hate it."

"Sooner or later, we're going to run out of places to run to." Katt said very slowly. She had been on the bridge during Jesse's story, but hadn't been noticed. It had disturbed her, but she couldn't help think that maybe the answers they needed were in the Entity.

"More true then not." Fox said. "The problem is, we can't get help from our own people, they're too busy building up cities and thus forth. They can only provide political support."

"Even that might be too risky." Wrin pointed out. "If the GalFed takes offense to it and decides that your people are a liability…"

"I don't think they'll do anything, not as long as we're marked as endangered." Said Fara. "That won't last forever though." Snuggled on her chest asleep, Hope shifted as she spoke, and Fara automatically soothed her child.

"Any way you put this, this whole situation is very dangerous." Said Slippy. "According to the workers that were helping us, The GalFed is starting to fracture a bit. The Rinaldi have completely pulled out, they did the minute they heard their colony was going to be wiped out."

"Any comments on what they think of us?" Fox asked.

"Eh, we're heroes again."

"So what are we going to do, exactly?" Wolf wanted to know. "We can't ignore the fact that the GalFed is going to continue wiping entire planets clean."

"We're going to try to stop them." Fox sighed. "The problem is, we're a bit outgunned. They're sure to send more ships, and the last time was hard enough."

"Strategy time, eh?" Falco asked, running his fingers through his feathers.

"No kidding. The problem is, it's hard to defend against distance and melee at the same time, considering the limited number of cannons on the Great Fox." Said Slippy. "We're probably going to take damage every time."

"Sounds to me like we need some new guns." Jesse said, fingertips pressed together, looking deeply thoughtful.

"I just got overhauled, thank you." ROB said through the intercom.

"ROB, you know as much as I do that this ship isn't going to fare very well against four or more GalFed cruisers." The mongoose sighed. "So don't argue."

"Well, we need something that isn't Lylatian then." Peppy said. "Because I'm pretty sure we're carrying the heaviest guns we can from our own system."

"And they don't do crap to GalFed cruisers." Said Slippy sourly.

Jesse played with one of the vines on his arm, deep in thought. The resurrected missiles had ripped apart the GalFed ships, but he knew that he couldn't fit the Great Fox with those. After sorting through what he knew, he sighed and beckoned to the Entity, letting it into his mind, reaching out for weapons experts and conferring.

"Jesse? You ok?" Fox frowned, seeing that distant look come back, knowing that Jesse had faded back into the Entity.

"Hmm? Yes, I am. Just thinking."

"We just got a transmission from the High Command." ROB suddenly said. "Apparently the GalFed just sent out a new group to continue the orders and find us. Six heavy cruisers."

"Oh, wonderful." Falco spat. "We're dead."

"They can't hit us while we're in warp." Said Peppy. "Where are they going, ROB?"

"Versyi, to finish it off."

There was a long silence, and Fox sighed. "We keep going. Find out what planet they're going to hit next. We'll try to protect that."

"You got it." ROB said, and the ship changed direction in warp, everyone holding on as the ship shuddered, making a sudden turn. "Sorry."

"That's ok." He shook his head. "Meeting adjourned. If anyone comes up with a good idea, tell me."

Peppy sighed, shaking his head. "Again, ROB."

The scenario ran again, showing a predicted battlefield, based on what they knew of GalFed technology and strategy. Five heavy GalFed cruisers versus one Lylatian fast-attack cruiser meant bad odds for the Lylatian cruiser. Every time they ran it, the Great Fox ended up permanently disabled or destroyed.

"Not good." Fox said, rubbing his chin.

"Keep in mind the simulations I ran before the war were a little like this as well. The computers never predicted that one cruiser could beat all of Andross' military." ROB said.

"True, but still… this situation is a little different. We knew how the Venomians were, we don't know everything about the GalFed. That, and they're out to exterminate us for being 'contaminated.'"

"Sorry." Jesse ducked his head.

"Don't apologize, kiddo. We couldn't just leave you behind." Fox ruffled Jesse's long hair. "Run it again, ROB."

"Would it take this long to wipe out Versyi?" Jirest said, looking at a map spread out on the floor of the den. He and Wrin were talking shop in the Rekuva's home language, trying to second-guess their own government. They were starting to suspect that maybe, just maybe, their people hadn't changed as much as they thought.

"Maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that actual death is what they were striking for with the FAKK zones." Wrin said, tapping the map. "The sweep path I got from my friend doesn't make much sense. They're herding the Entity toward the other systems, not away from. Fleeing ships would be able to get to other worlds outside the colonies."

"Mm. You're right, it's not a very solid extermination plan. They should be using multiple crews, not just one large one…" He sat back. "It's all bull, Wrin. It has to be. This doesn't fit with the other strategies of the GalFed."

"Sure it does. It's inherently stupid. Besides, that planet-killer laser wasn't bull, that was serious."

"Don't start. And we were witnessing it. I'm starting to think there's something else going on here. I mean there always is."

"Not always." She corrected. "Though this just plain reeks of secondary objectives. I'm glad I ditched when I did, I wouldn't want the job of carrying out the FAKK orders, or anything else. What's Jesse think?"

"Jesse's working with Slippy on this ship's weapons. I've given them every weak point the GalFed cruisers have, and they aren't many." He sighed. "I'm scared, Wrin. I'm peaceful if it's my time to die, but… I know that none of our friends are ready yet. They've all got so many years ahead of them…"

She nodded in agreement. "Which is why we're doing what we can, right?" She pulled him close and rocked him, trying to sooth him. He sighed and accepted it, eyes closing slowly, halfway wishing he had never started mistrusting his own people, but knowing he couldn't go back to the way it was before, and that he wouldn't want to if he could.

"There HAS to be a weakness we're missing." Slippy said in frustration. "We can't upgrade our guns right now, so we've got to make do, but we're so outgunned it's not even funny."

"No kidding." Jesse was reading through a huge printout that spanned about twelve feet. They had been burning through reams of paper trying to figure out how to get around the technology they faced. "The real trouble is if we're surrounded. They'll break this ship like a wishbone."

"Skip the imagery." ROB begged from a terminal nearby, where he was watching the conversation, which was taking place in the bay. The pair was surrounded by idling computers, weapons parts, a variety of doodads and thingamajigs they had been trying to tweak and had so far unsuccessful.

"Sorry." Jesse smiled weakly. He had brushed of the Entity for the time being, it was too distracting, and Slippy seemed relieved, happy that his friend seemed more normal again. "But if our guns can't cut through the armor of the GalFed ships, what can?"

"Ok, let's take this step-by-step." Slippy stood and started to pace, a carrot stick hanging out of his mouth. In an attempt to slim down, he was keeping himself to healthy snacks. "For starters, what do the GalFed use for armor?"

"Something developed by the Rekuva, mostly silicon-based. Too reflective for lasers to be of any effect." Jesse replied, leaning back against the palms of his hands and yawning widely. "That said, explosives are probably the most effective thing to use."

"As you demonstrated not long ago, yes, but we don't have many projectile weapons aboard. Our bombs are limited, and I'm not sure how much damage they'd do without getting at least slightly under the armor of the GalFed ships." Slippy frowned. "Dammit, what can you use to hurt something made of silicon?"

"A hammer." Jesse blurted, then blinked. "Slippy… can the Great Fox effectively ram something?"

"Get that thought out of your head." Slippy replied. "The bridge is at the front, and not well armored. Ramming another ship would collapse the Great Fox's neck and probably take out the guns and living quarters."

"God, it was just an idea." He replied, hurt.

"Sorry… too much stress." Slippy slowed his pacing. "… However…"

"What?"

"ROB, didn't the mechanics do something to your shields?"

"Doubled the power. Why?" ROB paused. "No way, Slippy, I'm not fighting close quarters with GalFed ships."

"But it MIGHT be the only way to crack their armor." Jesse said. "We need to build some more computer models… This is going to need some analyzing."

Wolf woke up with a start, choking off a cry of pain and sitting up, rubbing his arms and shivering as he kicked off the covers, wrapping himself in his robe and leaving his room. The Great Fox was out of warp, orbiting another colonized planet, a flurry of shuttles surrounding it. ROB was in conversation with the colonies at all times now, apparently, trying to figure out how spread the Entity was, trying to get up a good defensive plan against the GalFed. Wolf had heard that Jesse and Slippy had an idea that ROB didn't like at all, but the pair of super-geeks hadn't said anything specific to anyone yet.

Wandering into the kitchen, he saw Jesse sitting at the table, pouring over a few notebooks which were covered in math formulas and scribbles that didn't appear to be any language Wolf recognized. Jesse glanced up when he came in though, smiling a little. "Insomnia?"

"Nightmares." Wolf grunted, leaning into the fridge, finally gathering what he needed to make himself a Bloody Mary. Jesse watched curiously, eyes flickering across the flow of the wine-red robe absently.

"Nice robe."

"Only one I own." Wolf replied, sitting heavily and taking a drink, chewing on the celery absently. "What are you writing?"

"Trying to figure out some fine details of Slippy and I's idea."

"Which entails what?"

"Some close combat… The Great Fox ramming the GalFed ships to be exact." Seeing Wolf's look, he smiled sourly. "Yeah, ROB thinks we're bonkers, but it just might work."

"If it does, it's worth it, but Fox'll want computer models."

"We know, we've got them already. We just want to be sure it'll work." Jesse watched Wolf as his friend slouched farther into the chair, still chewing on the celery. "What'd you dream about?"

"Nothin' pleasant."

"Yeah, that would be why it's called a nightmare…"

The door opened, and Drax stuck his head in. "Mind if join you two?"

"Sure." Wolf waved his hand lazily, and Drax slipped in, sitting down beside him and looking across and Jesse's worn notebooks. "Why are you up?"

"I was working on my story. Needed a break. How about you two?"

"Touch-up math for a combat simulation." Jesse replied, shoving the notebooks aside. "Which I'm tired of doing."

"Bad dreams." Wolf sighed.

"Which I was trying to pry out of him, somewhat unsuccessfully." Jesse added.

"In my experience, it helps to talk about nightmares, Wolf." Drax remarked.

"… I don't want to share any of it." Wolf hunched his shoulders, shaking his head.

"Why not?" Jesse stood and moved to hug Wolf from behind, setting his jaw on Wolf's shoulder. Wolf sighed a bit, placing his real hand on Jesse's crossed wrists for a second, still wondering just who it was holding him.

"It's embarrassing."

"What, you get chased by vicious teddy bears?" Noticing Drax's look, Jesse added defensively, "I've had nightmares like that before, ok?"

"Not embarrassing like that." Wolf shook his head.

"Leave him alone, if he doesn't want to talk about it." Drax heard himself say.

"It isn't healthy though." Jesse protested.

There was a long silence, then Wolf whispered, "I dreamed about a former boyfriend."

"Oh… How was it bad, though?"

"He… he used to… hurt me… really badly."

"Jesus, Wolf." Drax blanched. "Why did you put up with it?"

"I kinda, kinda liked it then… but…" Wolf's voice choked off, and he gave up, hands tight around his dog tags. He had never taken off that third tag, Leon's tag. He just tucked the chain under his shirt, kept all three on, the silver ovals close to his body and heart. He didn't know why he kept it, he just did, a memento of his past, of a past love. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Jesse nodded and rocked him automatically, ignoring the confusion of the Entity, pushing the voices back. The Entity liked Wolf, but then, the Entity liked most living things. "I'm sorry."

"It isn't your fault."

Drax watched this, thinking silently, looking at the hurt that was all over Wolf's face, displayed in his submissive, pained body posture. It wasn't just the dream that was bothering him, and Drax knew it. "Your entire past hurts doesn't it?"

Wolf whimpered and nodded weakly. "Until… about two years ago… or less…"

"When Venom rejoined the rest of Lylat?"

"… Yes."

There was a silence, then Drax spoke again. "Look, the past can hurt, but you can't get rid of it. It's always there. All you can do is work to make sure that the present is better, and it is. We all have each other here, and everyone on this ship cares for you very much, including me."

Jesse opened one of his eyes and looked at Drax, one eyebrow quirking just slightly, arms tightening just a little around Wolf. Drax knew the look, Jesse wanted him to back off. He decided not to react to it.

Wolf smiled weakly, finishing his drink. "Thanks, Drax."

"No problem, it's the least I can do. I don't think it's enough…"

After a few minutes Wolf staggered to his feet, yawning. "I gotta get some sleep. Don't stay up to late…" He wobbled off, evidently returning to his room.

"You can stop glaring, you know." Drax remarked as Jesse returned to his notebooks with a resigned sigh, tapping a pencil against the scribbled-on, wrinkled paper.

"You're flirting with him." Jesse sounded irate and tired, pressed too far for his own good.

"I know. I can't help it really, it's just…"

"That he's a great guy. I know. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't do it."

"I can't promise anything."

Jesse didn't reply.

"Look, General Pepper, I understand the uncertainty you feel about this situation." The Vun said, sitting across from Pepper, voice understanding and firm. Pepper had learned to ignore voice tones when it came to politicians. "But if your 'mercenaries' continue their current path, we're going to have to discontinue support of your race entirely! Their rash actions are endangering all of your people! Doesn't that matter?"

"First of all, I don't think they were the ones that destroyed your ships. Second of all, they're under my orders. Senator." Pepper replied, arms crossed. "I've yet to hear a good reason for the killing that your ships are trying to perform, so I'm having my own people do a little scouting on their own."

"Your mercenaries are contaminated by the very thing we are trying to protect the universe from! They are deluding you!"

"Senator, shut up." Pepper growled. "You mean Jesse Patterson? Kid genius who's linked to the Entity?" Seeing the shock on the Vun's face, he smiled. "Yes. I know about it. He's spoken to me through the radio. I don't agree that the Entity should be wiped out, and I can guarantee that no other Lylatian will. It is the decision of the High Command that the GalFed is being rash, and we shall continue to support the actions of our people in the colonies."

The Vun stood. "You're making a mistake, General."

"I've made a lot of mistakes. But I'm sure that this isn't one of them."

Katt woke up with a start at sat up, looking at the clock. She had woken up a little early, which was a good thing. Falco didn't wake up easily. Even as she looked at the clock, her boyfriend mumbled and rolled over, feathers fluffing up. She pecked him on the cheek and got up, getting dressed and leaving him to sleep in a bit.

Most of the group had already gathered in the kitchen. Wolf already had coffee made, and was absorbed in making breakfast, headphones plastered over his ears, humming to himself as he cooked. She accepted a cup of coffee from Drax and sat down. "So, anything new?"

"Nothing good, really." Fox replied, rubbing one of his temples wearily. "The GalFed has officially decided we're dangerous and has marked us to be killed or captured. They also have tried issuing ultimatums to the High Command. General Pepper told them off as politely as he could, apparently."

"Good for Pepper. What's the rest of the High Command think?"

"They're standing by us, for now."

Peppy walked in and sat. "Versyi is finished off. Apparently they did a very thorough search of the planet before doing so. They claim they wanted to capture some of the colonists 'for observation.'"

"Glad Versyi was evacuated then." Said Fara, opening one eye. She was sitting next to Fox, feeding Hope, who was mumbling happily under the blanket that was draped over Fara's shoulder and part of her chest. "But haven't they given up on studying the Entity?"

"Apparently not. Who knows if they're still searching for immortality, but I can't blame them for searching for more weaknesses in what they're trying to destroy." Fox sighed, kicking a foot back and forth absently.

Alarms suddenly blared through the ship, and everyone leapt up, running to the bridge, leaving Fara and Wolf staring at each other, Wolf with his headphones hanging around his neck.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" Fara said with a sour smile.

"No kidding." Wolf agreed, looking at a stack of waffles with his hands on his hips, sighing. "Well, I guess I can just set all of this aside for later, then we can go see what the god damn fuss is about…"

"The High Command just sent us a message. The GalFed just officially announced that they're coming after us with hostile intent." ROB announced once people started arriving. The robot was standing, looking at the screens around him, display windows opened over each other as he tracked several dozen things at once. "At the same time, the Rinaldi sent us a warning notice that three GalFed convoys have launched for the fringe."

"How many ships total?" Fox said, landing in his chair and bringing up holographic displays with flying fingers.

"Over twenty for certain."

"Oh, hell. Five ships is bad enough…" Slippy said, sitting down and running combat scenarios. "Fox. We're screwed."

"Don't say that!" Fox snarled. "We're going to make it!"

Peppy, who was looking over Slippy's shoulder as the last people came onto the bridge, Wolf drying his hands, Falco rubbing sleep out of his eyes. "Best case scenario is run like hell." He said softly.

"We don't have anywhere to run to." Jesse said, eyes distant for a second then focusing back.

"Not to mention that if we run, the colonies have basically no protection." Said Katt.

"Twenty-plus GalFed cruisers." Slippy said slowly. "Five, we had figured out… but… over twenty?"

There was a long silence, then Fox spoke again, voice severe. "ROB, put out messages to everyone, every colony, see if they can help in any way. Keep some contact up wit the High Command, see if they can get this order stopped."

"You got it."

"Slippy, can we do anything to increase the Great Fox's defense?"

"Not any more then it has been, boss."

"God damn it. How about the Arwings?"

Slippy frowned. "I'm not sure. I'll take a look."

"Good. Now. Wrin, Jirest, get us makes on those cruisers if at all possible." He paused, and after a moment of debate looked at Jesse. "Is there anything you can do to help us?"

Jesse slowly smiled, and it was absolutely demonic. "Maybe."

"Great, do whatever it is and wipe that expression off your face. Stack'em, pack'em, rack'em people. We don't have much time."

Jesse left the bridge, dragging along Falco, Wolf, and Drax behind him. "I'm going to need you're guy's help."

"What are we going to do?" Drax asked.

"Temporarily dismember the Landmaster."

Slippy put his hands on his hips, watching as Fara's shuttle was hurriedly outfitted for combat, the huge turret-mount gun having been strangely converted by Jesse and mounted on the top. He didn't approve of his tank being disassembled again, he had just recently gotten the thing back together properly after Wolf had accidentally wrecked it testing out one of Jesse's combat suits.

"Ok, are you going to explain this to us now?" Drax asked, helping splice wires together.

"Application of principal." Jesse replied around the huge wires he held delicately between his teeth, stripping others with quick motions of his hands. The AI of the shuttle watched this with curiosity. Outside, Falco and Wolf were finishing the spot welding, making sure the turret was strongly mounted and properly armored. "This thing is about eight times the fire power of an Arwing, because of some adjustments Slip and I made when we rebuilt it not long ago. It's firing rate has dropped, and the recoil is up, but we've made it a plasma cannon on a small scale."

"Got a suspicion that the GalFed ships might be susceptible to plasma?"

"They're susceptible to heat, period." Jesse grunted, finishing with the wiring and standing up on a ladder, wedged partly into the ceiling crawlspace of the shuttle. "From the information we've been given, they rely on heat shields when they have to go close to an extreme heat source, like a star. A plasma gun fires something almost on par with a sun's plasma."

"And let me guess. Your conversions just now keyed it up more?"

"You got it. OW!" This was when the wires sparked, his tail going straight, fur on end.

"You ok?"

"I have an afro, but other then that I'm just dandy." Jesse grumbled, pulling in the finished wiring and rolling up the excess, closing all of the hatches and backing out of the crawlspace, missing the ladder and landing on his butt in front of Drax. "NOT A WORD!"

Drax just smiled a bit. "Done?"

"Yeah, if Wolf and Falco are." He stood, dusting himself off. "This thing will need two people piloting it though, because someone's got to control the cannon."

"I'm sure someone will volunteer."

Falco and Wolf jumped off the shuttle, joining the other two in admiring their handiwork. "Not pretty, but functional." Falco finally said. "Tell you what, Jesse, I'll see if Katt will be willing to fly this thing while I gun."

"Thanks, Fal." Jesse pounced, tail whipping around. Falco tolerated it until one of the vines started tickling him, then prying Jesse off and holding him off the ground at arm's length. "Hey!" Jesse protested.

"You weigh nothin' kid. You eat right?"

"Put me down!"

Falco shrugged and dropped him. "Might as well tell Fox we're done eh?"

"Probably a good idea." Wolf said as both he and Drax helped Jesse up. "Take a bit of stress of the poor guy…"

"Look, ROB, I know you'll be taking the Great Fox in close this time." Fox said quietly, talking to the robot as they looked at the combat simulations. "But the minute hull integrity starts to drop, get out of there and go to pure defensive. I'm not going to risk this cruiser."

"Or Hope and Fara." ROB looked at Fox. "We know you're scared."

"Can't help it." He shook his head wearily as Jesse came back in, the others following him. "Done?"

"Done. Katt and Falco are going to fly it."

"I just hope you know what you're doing. A tank cannon on a shuttle…" He shook his head. "Just crazy enough to work."

"Thank you." Jesse sat down. "What's their ETA?"

"Less then half an hour from now."

"How the hell are they moving so fast?"

"Different engines from us, I guess." Fox popped his knuckles, fidgeting.

As the minutes ticked down, everyone gathered on the bridge, waiting silently for the alarms to trigger again. The Great Fox and the Arwings were as prepared as they could get, the Colonies had no war equipment of any kind and promised repairs if they survived the fight. The High Command had no power to stop the attack.

Eventually the red lights started flashing on the walls, and Fox stood, looking around at everyone. Not even in their war, had they faced such a hopeless battle. Fara stepped into Fox, holding Hope, and it progressed from there to become a massive group hug/prayer, spending a few precious seconds trying to reassure each other.

"45 seconds until they drop from warp." ROB announced, voice tense as his metal hands flew over the keyboard, bringing the Great Fox to combat readiness.

Fox nodded, kissing Hope's forehead. "Let's do this."

Those flying fighters left the bridge, leaving behind a small collective. Fara, Wolf, Drax, and Jesse, all standing there watching the others sprint away, adjusting headsets, all worried.

"What do you need us to do, ROB?" Drax finally asked.

"Grab a weapons terminal, you can help with the smaller defensive turrets and such, help me keep track of this." ROB made a sighing noise. "This is going to be hell."


	2. 

Eternity's Conflict

Chapter One: A Glimse of Immortality

The Lylatian shuttle shot through the atmosphere, Wolf glancing at the coordinates that were flashing on one of his computer screens, part of the message that ROB had translated, a little smile sneaking to life as he did a barrel roll, taking the shuttle lower. Jesse was returning, and suddenly all of the bullcrap that was happening didn't matter as much.

He hadn't been surprised when he had woken up and Fox hadn't been there. It was just another reminder of how awkward his lifestyle could be sometimes, even when everyone accepted him. He wasn't going to be able to change his tastes, either, and wasn't looking forward to therapy at all. He had buried his past, and didn't want it brought to life. Old pain could still be agonizing, and he knew that well.

He circled and landed the shuttle gently. It was just on the edge of the destruction, on one side of the shuttle a desert stretched, rivers finding new banks slowly, and on the other side was a rich jungle. He opened the hatch and walked down it, looking around slowly, then walked to the edge of the jungle, looking for any sign of Jesse. The coordinates were right, he knew that much. Maybe Jesse just wasn't here yet…

As if to answer his question, a red and black form flew out of one of the trees and tackled him at waist-height, making him gasp for air as they rolled into the clay-rich dirt. After sneezing a few times, Wolf grinned up at Jesse, who was sitting on his stomach, tail whipping back and worth. "Miss me?"

"God, you have no idea." Jesse replied, hugging him tightly, eyes closed. Wolf sat up fully and returned the hug, rubbing Jesse's back absently. His smile faded, though, when he saw the vines, the Entity's mark, wrapped up one of Jesse's arms and across his collarbone, graceful tendrils seeming to throb and flicker with life. He pulled back, looking at Jesse uncertainly, looking at those green eyes and not seeing the same person. "What's wrong?"

"You're not… you." Wolf replied, running one of his fingers over the vines. "I can see the Entity in your eyes, looking back at me."

Jesse smiled sadly. "I won't be in the Entity forever, Wolf. I'm just helping it network itself a bit better. After I'm done, I'm leaving it."

"You are?"

"Yes." He pecked Wolf on the lips, tongue flicking out to brush Wolf's nose. "Come on, let's get back to the Great Fox. I need a shower and a decent meal."

Wolf chuckled and walked up the ramp arm-in-arm with his friend, the person he cared for so much, and was troubled. He didn't want to accuse Jesse of lying, but the younger mongoose seemed different, happy deep down. Sure, Jesse had been happy before, but Wolf had known an inner depression always troubled the young man, spawned from his unusual situation. And now, Jesse had found somewhere he was accepted and loved, a hive mind that could feed his stunning intellect all the information it wanted.

Even as he flew the shuttle back up to the Great Fox, the fingers of one of Jesse's hands intertwined with his mechanical ones, he had to wonder who exactly had kissed him.

When the shuttle exited the atmosphere, Wolf gaped. It seemed that in spite of what Fox had said, the High Command had sent support, and now three construction carriers were surrounding the Great Fox, putting up temporary scaffolds, removing ruined armor, rebuilding the wing. Wolf went around the robots and landed with some mild difficulty, maneuvering around the busy robots and touching down.

"Good god, Slippy. These people arrived fast." Wolf remarked, coming down the ramp. Slippy was standing in the center of the bay, looking at blueprints.

"Yes indeed."

"I didn't see Lylatian markings." Jesse remarked, and Wolf glanced around, realizing that it was true—none of these robots looked familiar in design.

"That's the interesting part. This support was sent from one of the other colonies, not the High Command. Not that it matters, we need it." The young mechanic grinned. "Busy times."

"No kidding." Peppy said, walking over. "Jirest is on the squawk with his former bosses, they're denying everything. I think Lylat arrived just in time for the collapse of the GalFed."

"I think we're the key factor, actually." Jesse said, twitching an ear that was wrapped in the Entity's vines. "We tipped the scales. Not it matters, it's natural, old governments collapse and new ones go up."

"Still in the Entity, eh Jesse?" Slippy frowned a bit.

"For the time being. Don't worry, I'm ok, it just needs my help."

"If you say so. Oh, someone missed you." He nodded at Legs, who was assisting in the overhaul. "Hey, Legs! Look who's here!"

The robot paused, eyes lighting up in the up-arrows representing happiness, and plowed over, knocking its owner down and hugging with four legs. Jesse laughed out loud, returning the hold, talking in code to his robot absently.

"One big happy family again." Peppy said.

"This happens a lot to us, it seems." Wolf said. "First Fara, now Jesse."

"Bad luck." Slippy said. "Got to have some bad to put the good in perspective… Uh, speaking of which…" He lowered his voice. "Don't talk to Fara or Fox about Hope right now. We don't really know what's going on yet, but apparently Hope didn't pass a few medical tests they had ROB do, and they're both really sad and scared about it."

"Oh, god. I hope it's nothing serious." He shook his head wearily.

Jesse paused, considering, remembering Hope's fascination with moving objects, her dislike of looking at people's faces except her mother's, dislike of being picked up. "Hope's autistic." He said without looking up, voice distant.

Everyone looked at him. "Why do you say that?"

"Classic signs. It's not severe, but I'm pretty sure she is." He pulled his hand down his face, standing. "I hope I'm not right, but that's my guess."

"Poor Fox and Fara." Slippy shook his head.

"No. Poor Hope." Peppy said, sighing. "Well, let's get on with the repairs. God knows we've got enough of them to do."

Drax ducked a support beam and hid in the kitchen, looking at Katt, who was also there, handing out coffee in disposable cups to some robots. "Uh…? Do I want to know?"

Visors went up, showing alien faces, and one remarked, "These are just work suits. We must trade with your people, this stuff is excellent."

"They've never had caffeine before." Katt explained. "Though I must admit, the idea of Vun on caffeine is a little scary…"

This brought a laugh from the work crew, and they clumped out, heading for the docking bay.

"Interesting times." Drax flopped in a chair and stretched.

"No kidding." Katt handed him a mug of coffee, shaking her head. "Fox spoke to the High Command. Apparently we're being tagged with the destruction of those cruisers, as suspected."

"So we're public enemy number one?"

"To the GalFed. The Rinaldi are praising us as heroes, as are most colonies."

"Can't please everyone."

"Pretty much, yeah."

Wolf came in, hauling Jesse piggyback. "Hi Drax, hi Katt."

"Hey Wolf. Welcome back Jesse." Katt said, Drax nodding, feeling obscurely jealous of this skinny mongoose who had claimed Wolf as his own.

"Heh, thanks Katt. Glad to be back believe me." Jesse got down, sitting down as Wolf went into the fridge and freezer, mumbling to himself about an early dinner.

"Are you…?"

"Yes, I'm still linked with the Entity." Jesse got a soda and sat, opening and slugging it down in two gulps. "Oh, thank god, I have been having caffeine withdrawl like you would not believe."

Drax chuckled softly. "Something the Entity can't cure, I take it?"

Jesse blinked. "The Entity doesn't 'cure' anything. It just is."

"Explain."

"It's like a worldwide web of minds, only it spans the galaxy. It's a trip, it really is." He chuckled lightly. "You think you're going nuts as voices echo in your mind, but you know you're not, because you're home, more so then ever before." His expression faded to a frown, and he shook his head wearily. "It… I don't think it's my home though. I mean, my home is here I think…"

"On the Great Fox?"

"Wherever Wolf happens to be…"

Wolf snorted, coming out of the freezer, arms loaded. "Flirt."

"Yes." He smiled. "Nothing could ever change that. Speaking of such, anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

"Don't think so. Well, besides what you know about, no." Katt said. "Fox wants to move away from this planet as fast as possible, now."

"Can't blame him, we're sitting ducks right now, excuse the expression." Wolf twirled a knife through the air, chopping up meat for a stew.

"Mm, speaking of him, better talk to him about things." Jesse bounced to his feet, tossing the empty can down the garbage chute and opening another one. "Where is the boss-man, Katt?"

"On the bridge. I'll come with you."

Drax sighed once they had gone, settling back, watching Wolf cook and trying to understand. Wolf did seem happier now, content in a quiet way, but that undercurrent of worry and trouble ran beneath it as always. Even on medication for being bipolar, Wolf was depressed, even if he hid it well. "Wolf?"

"Hmm?" Wolf glanced over at Drax, setting the meat aside and working on vegetables, tail twitching.

"… Are you happy?"

"That's an odd question." He blinked, hands fidgeting with the vegetable peeler. "I guess I am. I mean, I'm not allowed to fly for a while, but I'm in a place I'm loved and accepted. I've got people to protect who can protect me in return."

"I only asked because it doesn't seem like you are."

He sighed, continuing what he was doing, not reacting when Drax stood and joined him, getting another peeler and starting in on the potatoes. "I'm worried. I just didn't want to say anything."

"About Jesse?"

"About Jesse, about Hope, about everyone on board. The entire team is in a very dangerous spot right now…" Wolf huffed, shaking his head, chopping the newly peeled carrots and dumping them in water. "I don't want to loose anyone else, Drax."

"I can understand that."

There was a long silence, and Drax dipped his fingers in the water, tracing them over the tiled counter, making a design. Wolf glanced at as it slowly disappeared, the water drawing in on itself automatically, becoming randomly placed droplets. Still, though, he caught the design, and whimpered, shaking his head. Drax had chosen a glyph that wasn't explainable in modern terms, it meant a combination of things, friend, family, caring, desire. And it made Wolf sad in a way he didn't really understand as he rearranged the droplets into a solid 'friend' glyph.

"Sorry."

"No. No. Thank you, Drax. Thank you for understanding."

"What else am I supposed to do?"

Wolf didn't answer that.

"Hi, Jesse." Fox glanced up with a weary smile when Jesse skipped in, noticing the vines immediately.

"Hi Fox. Can we talk for a minute?"

"Sure." Fox gestured at one of the empty chairs, which Jesse hopped into, folding his legs under himself Indian-style. "What's up?"

"I'm sure you've noticed I'm currently within the Entity… Listen, I'm not sure, but there is a lot of things that the Entity knows. It remembers for so many millennia it's unbelievable." He rubbed his jaw. "Listen, it hasn't dug up the information on the planet-destroyers yet, but… It remembers when the Rekuva last tried to destroy it."

"Oh really? ROB, listen to this for me. Fire away, Jesse."

Jesse sat back, pressing his fingertips together, and reached out an ethereal hand, catching the threads of the Entity network and pulling it to him, pulling the memories around him and letting himself remember, sifting through until he found what he wanted in the memory of a long-dead, long-extinct alien named Prith.

"I won't bother with your standard 'once-upon-a-time's' or 'a long time ago's.'" Jesse said, allowing Prith to breathe through his lungs, speak through his voice, the gender-neutral personality overjoyed with his life, with being allowed to be so close to living again. "Who knows how long ago it was. The Rekuva weren't like they are now then, they were farging genocidal maniacs in pursuit of ultimate perfection, ignoring the fact perfection is, in the end, unreachable. All things wither and die, and that is what the Rekuva feared then, and now.

The Entity has been around since the first big bang. I don't know how it came to be, as far as it's concerned it just always was. It thinks it was made by the same thing that made the universe, but I think that's pushing it a bit. Anyways, the Entity has a lot of 'impossible' things at its proverbial fingertips that the Rekuva wanted. It had power, knowledge, technology, peace, and most importantly to them, immortality. Those most important people to the Entity, the central minds, never die and never age. But they are not themselves, never, they carry the weight of the network with them at all times. They become it, so to speak.

When the Rekuva first encountered The Entity in their expansion across the universe, they did not know what to think about it. They thought it was some sort of religious cult, all the better to sweep the followers out of the way. It wasn't until they met one of the central minds that they realized, just a little bit, what was going on. But they pushed that aside the minute they found out that being that spoke to them, seemingly quite mad, was approaching is nine thousandth birthday.

… He died, very horribly, at the hands of the Rekuva as they tried to find out what kept him so young so long. Because he was a central mind, his agony ripped apart the system for weeks as the Entity tried to shuffle the information elsewhere, but still much was lost and never regained. They never figured out how he had lived so long, and finally, after many more deaths, they faced a surprise. Perhaps this was something they could never control, never copy, never make obey them. And it scared them.

Thus, a mass genocide, sweeping many systems, wiping out many races, rushing to crush the Entity from the universe. Fearing death, the Entity drew into itself, preserving what few central minds it could, and only now is trying to return. But the Rekuva remembers, and if they are not stopped, that horrible wave of death will happen again."

Jesse shivered, releasing the Entity even as he felt the vines grow farther down the back of his neck, curling across his shoulders, wrapping him tighter into the network. It wasn't him, but it was becoming him. He brushed that thought away and looked at Fox, who was rubbing thoughtfully at his chin, staring at Jesse as if shocked.

"That… that wasn't you talking, was it?" Fox finally said very slowly, watching Jesse's green eyes. That beautiful color was a whirlpool, showing him all and sucking him in. He shook off sharply.

"Nope, that was a voice across the ages." Jesse replied, shrugging. "Someone who died many, many years ago who knew what had to be said."

"So I assume that's all true?"

"Yes. Every word."

"So you're serious about immortality… Jesus, what else does the Entity know, Jesse?"

"A lot which should not be told."

"Good enough for me. ROB, you got all that right?"

"Every word."

"Good. We'll probably have to play it back a few times for everyone else." He looked at Jesse, who hadn't moved, tail twitching just slightly. "You know we're in trouble with GalFed, right?"

"Yes, I know."

"Should I assume they'd pay out their noses to get their hands on you?"

"Most probably." He hugged himself. "I want to stay here. With you guys. With Wolf."

"Yeah, I know, and we'll do our damnedest to make sure that happens." Fox stood, passing the chair and patting Jesse's shoulder, deep in thought.

"Fox?"

"Hm?"

"Before you ask… the Entity has never encountered Autism before, and has no cure for it."

Fox leapt out of his skin, staring at Jesse, who had turned the chair to look at him. "How… how did you…"

"When Peppy remarked that you and Fara were acting strangely, the pieces fell into place. I was hoping I was wrong, but…" He sighed, shaking his head. "Babies, especially newborns, watch everyone's face. Hope rarely does. She's fascinated with fast movement: a precursor of self-stim, like autistics do. She doesn't like being picked up or touched."

"All true." Fox shook his head wearily. "Fara was worried at those little nuances and talked to me about it. We had ROB do a medical scan of her mental activity. He's said it's very, very mild, chances are she might even grow out of it or be no different then a normal child with some help, but…" He hugged himself, shoulders curving in, looking very scared for a second or two. "But it worries me, Jesse."

"No one is perfect, Fox. She'll turn out fine." Jesse stood gracefully, patting Fox's shoulder. "No one is perfect."

"I know." Fox watched Jesse walk past him and down the hallway, and shivered. "ROB?"

"Yes?"

"That kid seems like he's older then Peppy now."

"He is, Fox. In a way, he is." ROB said. "If I understand everything right, he's got a wealth of information across millions of years at his fingertips."

"You sound happy."

"Not really." The robot shook his head. "I like the old Jesse better."

"We'll get him back… hopefully…"

"Don't count on it."

The Great Fox thundered away from the now-abandoned Versyi. As soon as the construction crews had finished, evacuation crews had arrived, and all citizens of the planet, both natural and colonists, had willingly left. They knew the danger of staying. For a while the transports paced the Great Fox, then broke away, without words saying goodbye and pressing farther into the fringe of the explored universe, looking for a world they would not be bothered on.

Fara sat on her and Fox's bed, which to her delight was now Rekuva-style. She had suggested it, and Fox got a kick out of it, though he demanded they add normal blankets to the mix. The sight of her fiancé stretching and burrowing into the fluff like a pup always made her laugh.

Her own pup was asleep in her personal smaller nest, curled up contentidly, sucking on a pacifier. It still made her chest ache when she looked at her child, so beautiful and perfect, knowing she was in a way handicapped. She loved Hope all the same, but it hurt her now. Her poor child…

Fox came in and tumbled over the edge the bed, pulling her down and hugging her close. She laughed, burrowing into him. "What's up?"

"I just got one hell of a backstory from Jesse, that's all. We're going to fill everyone else in later, but it's still sort of disturbing."

"How is he?"

"… He's different."

"Different how?"

Fox sighed, nuzzling her forehead. "Just… different. Older. Wiser. You look at him and see a lot of people in his eyes. It's… kind of scary, but… almost reassuring." He stared into the distance, finally saying. "You look into his eyes and you see thousands of years. It's like… meeting God."

Fara blinked at him, wanting a better explanation, but he just shook his head and buried his face into her hair, snuggling close for comfort. She returned it, eyes fluttering closed. Everything was all right when she and Fox were like this, she was warm, loved, protected. She let herself sigh, enjoying the peace which she knew would not last.


	3. Chapter Three: The Beast

Chapter Three: The Beast

Fox glanced around, looking at the small group of fighters that he was part of a formation of, and shook his head wearily, watching the counter on his display. The odds weren't in their favor at all, but they weren't going to run.

"They're breaking warp… now." Jesse's voice echoed through the radio, and as he finished speaking, a dozen GalFed warships appeared, phasing into view, engines slowing down. They were standard mixed fare, built for fighting, most of them heavily influenced by Rekuva technology. The dozen ships were in a fanned-out formation, traveling in a half-circle so that the Great Fox and fighters were, effectively, halfway surrounded.

"Can we have some weak points please?" Fox asked Jesse over the radio.

"We only have estimated ones, but here." Diagrams flashed up on all of the fighters' displays, showing the cruisers and highlighting possible points of weakness.

"Lylatian Cruiser Great Fox." A male Rekuva appeared on the radio screen, expression hard. "The GalFed orders that you turn over yourself and all crew to us immediately. If you resist, you will be fired upon."

"We don't take orders from the GalFed." Fox replied in a cold voice. "Only from the Lylat High Command."

"Ah. You must be the Commander McCloud we've heard so much about. I'll tell you right now, I don't buy into the talk of your little group being so scary in battle. I think you're a fool. There is no way you can win with the current odds."

"We'll see about that."

ROB saw the cruisers start to close on him as the arwings scattered, and engaged all boosters he could, sending the ship flying backwards, guns firing as fast as they could and inflicting no damage at all. The larger cruisers were slower, and the Great Fox easily slipped their grasp, those on board wincing when they felt the ship jump as one of the branches of an opposing ship drug across the hull, not able to inflict damage but rocking the ship just the same.

"The commanding ship of the convoy is the Rekuva vessel Burning Sunset." Wolf reported, eyes half closed, arm plugged into one of the computer consoles on the bridge. All of his mechanics were connected, and in that way, the AI chip in his head could look up information faster then he could ever wish to do. "The commander is Ghandar, looks like he has a long list of honors and thus."

"Nice to have a name to go with the face." Fox gritted his teeth, dodging between two of the cruisers, weaving around fighters and branches. "Falco, what are you doing over there?"

"Nothing yet." Falco replied, watching the display screen. "Trying to pick my shots… and with so many ships in close quarters, it's like a maze…"

"Look at it this way, Fly Boy, at least you ain't the one flying through it." Katt said, growling as she dodged fighters.

"We've got to break this up." Fara said, looking around at the tight quarters all of the cruisers were wedged in. "No wonder they aren't firing guns, they'll just fire on each other."

"Fox, bait them." Jesse said, frowning thoughtfully. "Let's see if we can't get some not-so-friendly-fire going."

"Not a bad idea. You heard the kid genius guys. Let's rock."

"Falco, try for their engines." Wolf remarked, watching Fara talk quietly to ROB. "I think this big ol'bird is going to kick it into gear."

"Damn right!" Fara grinned. "Punch it, ROB!"

Fox craned his neck, watching as the Great Fox blasted forward, shields glowing green as it collided with one of the GalFed ships. Both ships jumped from the collision, but the improved shields held, and the Great Fox's engines screamed as they went into high gear, slowly pushing the GalFed ship backwards, into one of the members of the convoy. Falco picked that moment to start firing, and the already messy fight dissolved into complete chaos.

Slippy's scream cut through the radio, and the entire team came to him to help. His arwing was tangled in the branches of one of the Rekuva ships, and was crushing the smaller craft without mercy. Knowing lasers wouldn't work, towhooks were fired, and the arwings used pure engine power to pull the branches apart, barely getting them far enough apart for the damaged ship to slip through. Slippy stammered his thanks, slowly limping back to the Great Fox's bay, barely getting there before he would have been caught by a wave of fighters.

"Regroup!" Peppy yelled, and Fox agreed, the fighters returning to the Great Fox, which had just wiggled out of the fight. "How long we been doing this, Fara?"

"22 minutes by my watch." Drax remarked into a radio headset he had picked up. "Listen, you've got two of their ships pretty much crippled, mostly hull integrity issues because they were forced into each other, with some engine trouble thrown in for spice. They left the fight and are on the outskirts, but haven't tried anything recently."

"So we've got ten pissy cruisers against us still eh?" Falco asked dryly.

"Could be a lot more real quick here. We've been monitoring high-frequency radio signals bouncing back and forth from them to what we assume is their commanding station. We haven't got any other warp signatures yet, but we know they're doing something."

"Joy." Fox sighed. "Any damage to the Great Fox, ROB?"

"Minor armor damage. Shield batteries are running low."

"… Slippy, when something is running on a battery, tell me."

"It just means he'll have to take energy away from the engines to sustain them, Fox." Slippy hastily said. "The current shield output is higher then normal and not generally expected to run for large amounts of time."

"Work on fixing that, will ya please?"

"They're doing something, Fox." Katt remarked.

They all watched as the GalFed cruisers slowly changed formation, keeping their distance from the small Lylatian cruiser. It seemed they weren't interested in attacking, just waiting for some signal from their commanders. Whatever the reason, it made the Lylatians uneasy, knowing something was in store for them, and in that respect, they were right.

"Politically speaking, this is a very bad idea indeed, Chancellor Pejim." The AI remarked, watching the Vun tap his fingers impatiently, waiting for the response from the convoy. "It's true that they have angered us, but we do not understand their culture fully. Perhaps we just do not know how to handle such a volatile species yet."

"Regardless, the decision was made, Giyg." Pejim replied. "We found a way to beat the Entity without the massacres last time, but never implemented it. Now at last it's been perfected, and we can see our own work come to life."

"But sir, it's never been tested…"

"Yes, it has been. Said tests were wiped out to eradicate evidence. We never did do field tests though." The Vun smiled slowly. "You have to admit that this kind of field test won't be available to us again in a long time, plus it will give us a chance to study this new race fully, as well as their technology."

"What about the civilian reports? We know there is a child on board. Politically speaking, it is a bad move sir."

He wove a hand. "The news crews won't find out about the kid. Its chance of surviving the test is fairly low anyways; we don't think children can survive the shock. Stop worrying, Giyg. Everything is going according to plan."

"I don't like this at all." Wrin said worriedly, twitching an antenna. She and Jirest had hopped into Wolf's old Wolfen III fighter, which had been retired until the team had realized that Rekuva could fit nicely into the two-seater gunboat. Jirest had learned to aim a turret one-eyed, so the pair evened out nicely. "This doesn't fit any strategy that I know of. If they were just getting orders, they should have continued attacking."

"So is this a good thing or a bad thing?" Peppy asked.

"I'm not sure."

"They're changing formation again." Drax remarked. "Looks like they're surrounding their commanding ship…"

"Incoming transmission." Fara said. "Looks like it's our good friend Ghandar."

"Accept it." Fox said. "So what's taking so long, Commander? Waiting for orders from above?"

"We've got our orders, McCloud. I want to speak to the contaminated individual you have aboard your ship."

"I have a name, you know." Jesse snapped. "What do you want?"

"Why did you allow yourself to be contaminated by the Entity?"

"It wanted my help, and I was curious. Why the hell do you want to know?" He settled his hands on his hips, frowning. "You look worried. What, you throwing a kill switch over there?"

"Not hardly." Ghandar smiled very weakly. He was a bit worried. He wasn't sure what he was about to turn loose. He had been told what it was, but he knew his government had lied before. "So. What's your purpose?"

"Mine or the Entity?"

"The Entity, of course."

"Peace. Knowledge. Contentment."

"Very altruistic. Now wonder it was stomped out of existence before…"

"Well, you can go to hell then!" Jesse snarled, eyes blazing. "So much for the generous, humanitarian GalFed!"

"Better then you, forcing people to join a cult which is useless. It's time the medicine was used against you." And with that, the transmission was cut.

"I don't like the sound of that." Falco said after a sustained break in radio chatter. "Because whatever he does is going to hit all of us…"

"Think they're making an example of us?" Peppy asked after thinking for a moment. "Trying out a new weapon?"

"Looks like we're about to find out." Fox said, staring at the command ship.

The Burning Sunset was shaking in place, then suddenly jolted as the hull cracked, what seemed like a new kind of armor wrapping over the ship in fleshy ropes as beams of crackling light lanced out and hit the cruisers, triggering the same process in the rest of the convoy. The formation listed and shifted as the cruisers dealt with their transformation, the Lylatian team backing up even more as the beams of light lanced out toward them but fell short.

Wolf tore his eyes away from the strange sight, looking at Jesse, who stood frozen, eyes wide, whole body trembling in what seemed like catatonic terror, staring at the Burning Sunset. Even as he watched, the vines suddenly retracted from Jesse's arms, and he saw fabric shift, apparently the vines were moving to wrap around Jesse's ribcage and shoulders. He reached out and touched Jesse lightly, fingers brushing his friend's arm. "Jesse?"

"K-ktu wenr ichl…" Jesse stammered out, voice slurring and slipping.

"LYLATIAN, Jesse! Please!"

"Not natural… dangerous, not natural…" He whimpered, shivering.

More beams shot out at the fighters, and at Fox's shouted command all of the smaller ships docked, the Great Fox backing away from the convoy, which was closing on the smaller cruiser again. None of the GalFed cruisers were answering radio pages, either under radio silence or simply ignoring the Great Fox, no one knew.

"Whatever the Burning Sunset did to the convoy, it's trying to do to us. We've got to get out of here." Fara said as the others arrived on the Bridge, manning stations as the Great Fox blasted backwards, barely dodging another beam.

"Yeah, but what the hell IS that?" Katt demanded, arms crossed and tail lashing.

"Incoming!" ROB remarked, and the Great Fox rocked as one of the beams finally hit, clipping the edge of the wing. "Minor hull damage. It went right through the shields like they weren't even there…" The robot stammered, blinking. "I'm loosing some sensors in that area. Hull integrity dropping quickly over the entire wing."

"Oh, my Lord." Slippy whispered, looking out one of the windows. The organic armor was spreading over the wing like wildfire, popping up plates and taking the wing down to the frame to make room. "Release all coolant! Slow it down!" Slippy demanded. ROB obeyed, and the others watched the fine mist plume surround the wing. It didn't even phase the thing, which continued its destruction.

"Jettison it!" Jesse suddenly said, lunging at ROB's controls. "Disconnect the entire wing right now!"

"Are you crazy?! That's a stabilizer! Do you have any idea how much speed we'll loose?" Falco blurted.

"Speed isn't going to do us any good if the body of the cruiser gets contaminated! DO IT ROB!" Seeing the robot hesitate, Jesse snapped something in code, and ROB obeyed immediately. "PUNCH IT!"

The Great Fox rocked with a stomach-retching impact, then shot away, sliding past the cruisers and getting some distance before it stopped to see what happened. The contamination spread across the entire wing and stopped there, unable to do anything else. The convoy, seeing the hit was thwarted, immediately started their attack again.

"Go into warp. Now." Jesse said, snapping some coordinates and not giving Fox time to argue. "Don't bother with calculations."

"Jesse, if…" Drax started.

"Not now. Just do it ROB."

The Great Fox jolted as the engines screamed into warp, leaving one of its wings behind.

There was a long silence, then Fox looked at Jesse. "What did you say that made ROB obey you without question?" He asked, voice calm and strange. ROB was supposed to defer to him, and no one else when it all came down to it.

"It's a back door called Asimov's Escape Loop." Jesse replied in a dry voice. "All robots have it, so programmers can force a robot to obey them without question."

"Nice." Slippy quirked an eyebrow. "I've heard of it, but didn't know it was real."

"It's real, and also very dangerous." ROB said dryly. "Because as the name implies, it lets the orders violate all normal procedure, up to and including the three laws of robotics."

Fox looked at Jesse, and sighed. "Guess it's good that I trust you then. So, new subject. What the hell was that thing that we just ran from?"

"I don't know." Jesse admitted.

"I can give you a hint." Drax said. "When that thing hit the convoy, a sonic pulse hit us right after, a frequency burst."

"Noise?"

"Right, except you can't hear in a vacuum. I only knew because I saw the radio system register it. Any chance you saved it, ROB?"

"One moment." ROB stopped moving for about a second and a half, then came back to life. "I've found it. There's a lot of static and interference.." He played the file, and everyone covered their ears as the speakers were assaulted by a harsh, few-second burst of noise. "But if you filter all of that out… this is what you get."

There speakers came back to life, and after some static-filled silence a low, snarling, distorted voice was heard, strange and multi-pitched, as if spoken from a thousand mouths, saying only three broken words.

"We are alive."

Falco sighed, leaning on the fridge door and staring at the contents moodily, poking around until he unearthed his most recent two-liter of soda. The Great Fox had retreated, and now was moving on to a rendezvous with a colony that had agreed to repair them. They had already put out the message on every channel and bandwidth they could, sending messages to the colonies and to their allies. As far as Fox was concerned, GalFed ships were now the enemy, and Falco was fairly sure his commander was right.

He sat heavily, opening the bottle one-handed and taking a drink wearily. Everyone was exhausted. Slippy was asleep in the den, worn out by nerves. His arwing was totaled, the frame had been bent so heavily it would have to be scrapped. The rest of the fighters were in ok condition, as was the shuttle, but a blow of a different kind had been struck. Everyone was kind of scared. No one wanted to think about what would have happened if the wing hadn't been jettisoned on time, but the worst part is that no one really knew what the consequences would have been.

"FAWKO!"

He jumped, and smiled tiredly when Fox walked in, carrying a wide-awake Hope, who was beaming happily. "Hey Fox. Hey, kid. Couldn't sleep either?"

"Hope woke us up, and it was my turn." Fox sat down, yawning widely. "Everyone else seems to be down for the count. Peppy found Jesse asleep on the bridge a few hours ago, according to ROB, and managed to wake him up and drag him to his bedroom."

"What was he doing up?"

"Listening to the noise clip, trying to figure out what we're facing. Seems his nerves wore him out. He's honest-to-god terrified." Seeing Hope was trying to chew on his dog tags, he substituted a pacifier. She sucked on it contentedly and nestled into him, tail twitching.

"Think he knows something that we don't?"

"I'm not sure. I mean, I'd like to think he'd tell us, but I know that's up for toss." Fox ruffled the fur between his ears absently, thinking. "I can't believe they actually build in a way around the laws of robotics."

"Ha, yeah, no kidding. I didn't think anything was supposed to go around those. I mean, I don't know much about them myself, only that it means that robots aren't supposed to kill people." He blinked. "And to that end, Fox, those laws are broken all over the place. War robots, assassin droids…"

"Yes, true. There is an alteration now that allows for allies and enemies during the time of war. Besides, War Bots are basically dummies controlled by one central AI, and assassin droids are illegal." ROB's voice said through the intercom speaker. "The Laws are still followed."

"Anything from Alpha, ROB?" Fox asked.

"Ba?" Hope asked, peering at the speaker in confusion, staying nestled into Fox.

"ROB." He corrected.

"BA!"

"No, nothing new from Alpha. I got a report an hour and a half ago that they were trying to set up some sort of defense net, but I doubt they'll get much going. The Hub can't be broken apart, so it's pretty much a sitting target for whatever that thing is."

"Has the GalFed fessed up anything?"

"And I quote. 'No comment.'"

Falco moaned, lurching to his feet and putting his two-liter away. "I'm going to attempt to go to bed, Fox."

"Ok. Hug Katt for me."

"I'll try to fit yours into the schedule…"

"One of my friends sent me a news release this morning." Wrin said, stirring sugar into her coffee absently. Wrin had become a dedicated coffee nut. "Apparently, what with the fact that we're blasting warnings all over this sector, the news crews got wind of it and have had all sorts of broadcasts playing. So, naturally, the GalFed had to make an official declaration to straighten everything out."

"The news crews were painting the GalFed as insane murderers, mind you. They took what they heard and ran with it." Jirest shook his head. "Of course, we've been broadcasting basically that, so what else could they think?"

"So what did they say?" Peppy asked, peeling an orange.

"Oh, they denied the entire thing. Versyi is too minor to be a huge impact except on the Rinaldi, who are rabid with anger, let me tell you. They're out of the GalFed and have closed their planet to any visitors _except_ emissaries from Lylat."

"Solid allies then?"

"They're praising everyone on this ship as a hero, especially Wolf."

Wolf snorted. "That's ok, the rest of the galaxy thinks I'm a mass murderer, so I guess it kind of evens out."

"What about the, well, thing? Did they say anything about that?" Slippy asked. "I know we've been broadcasting warnings about their ships having some sort of armor-targeting virus."

"They laughed that off." Jirest said angrily. "I'd love to know what that was. I've never seen anything like it, and I've been a soldier most of my life."

"I think we're missing the most important part." Fox rattled his fingers on the table. "What happens to the people on the ship when it's taken over?"

"Good question." Falco said. "But if they weren't answering the radio, I guess we can assume that whatever that thing is, it takes over machines and living creatures alike."

"The thing is, they meant to release it." Slippy suddenly said. "It came from the command ship and targeted the rest of the convoy. They actually meant to release it, so I guess that means that they're somehow controlling it."

"Ok, everyone, let's at least try to take this step by step here." Fara said, holding Hope. "I agree with Slippy, the GalFed released that thing, and given how the formation was working, we can assume they're controlling it. But they fired that… infection ray at us as well. Can we assume that anything they hit with that thing, they control?"

"Oh, hell, that's bad. That would mean that they control whatever they hit in battle." Falco said, eyes wide. "Guys, that was almost us."

"But it wasn't, so let's keep it that way and find a way to beat it." Katt said. "If the thing broke through their armor, that means they have to have more weak points right? If it's alive, wouldn't it be more open to attacks?"

"Theoretically, but it's surviving in a vacuum." Slippy sighed, tapping his chin. "Which might imply some sort of natural armor or resistance to attack."

Jesse, who had been listening to all of this absently, glanced at the table, listening to the rush of whispers that was getting louder in his head, hackles slowly rising. Danger was seeping into the network. "The convoy just reached one of the colonization planets." He said, making everyone look at him. "They've already taken down the minor orbiting defense lasers and have it surrounded."

There was a long silence, and Fox moaned, rubbing his eyes. "God… there isn't anything we can do, is there?"

"We're too far away now. I jumped us to someplace safe. Someplace the GalFed hasn't mapped…" Jesse said, voice distant and trailing off. After a moment he held up a finger and sat back, pressing his fingertips together, and lost himself the Entity's network.

It was like diving into ice water, the impact, then the rush hit him as the network sorted rapidly through his mind. He was almost done, a little more tweaking and the Entity would be streamlined in its processes. It didn't take long to find the voices on the endangered planet, to reach out to them and touch the minds.

A mixed colonization planet, mostly Vun, the hyper-fast thoughts streaking past him in a mix of florescence. He shook off and sorted it into focused thoughts. I want information! That cry went out, and the members on the planet glanced at him, noticing him, then seeming to bow. The Entity didn't have rank, but it had favorites, people with more power over the network, and that's what Jesse had.

Give me information! What planet are you on? What is going on?

A rush of whispers, data streaming to him, different minds saying different things, a wild mix he somehow understood.

[Cordun. We are on Cordun…

[One dozen GalFed ships…

[… no communication? Afraid!

[Where are you?

[Help us?

[HELP US?

Jesse's heart fell, and he swallowed. We cannot. We are at least three hours of travel away… we cannot fight what they have… our ship is damaged and outgunned. We are sorry, we are so sorry…

They were angry, for a few seconds, but then they saw the ship in his mind, the small crew with so much to live for, so great odds against them, and suddenly there was no anger, only fear, sadness. Jesse said nothing else, unsure of what to do.

He saw an image flash, blinding beams of light coming from the skies, striking the colonies… the thing, the virus? The GalFed ships were firing on the colonies with the 'infection beams'?

[What have we done wrong?

The rest of the Star Fox team had just blinked when they saw Jesse apparently go deep into thought, and had after a few seconds of talk figured out he had fallen deep into the Entity, for what reason they didn't know. Information, they guessed, and continued the conversation, glancing at the mongoose, who was shivering slightly, from fear or cold, they didn't know.

Then Jesse suddenly screamed, tumbling out of his chair and struggling on the floor, clawing at his temples and crying, screaming in agony. Chaos burst out in the galley as everyone fought to see what was going on, Wolf already at Jesse's side, trying to stop Jesse from hurting himself more. The mongoose had already clawed thin bloody tracks down the sides of his face and down his lower arms, and struggled blindly against Wolf, not seeming to know where he really was.

"Jesse! JESSE!" Wolf begged. "Please! What's happening to you?"

"Dying… killing us? Taking us…" Jesse thrashed again, eyes rolled back. "BEAST! Rabid beast…" This was an angry screech, as if in denial. "Consumed… taken apart…" One last struggle and he suddenly went limp with a whimper, panting weakly, eyes closed. Wolf held Jesse to his chest and rocked him, whimpering also, looking at everyone with confused, hurting eyes.

"What the HELL was that?" Falco asked, speaking for everyone.

"Something happened to the Entity." Drax said very slowly. "My only guess is that he was on the Entity's network, and something happened. I'll put money that it was the GalFed ships that did it, too…"

"Yeah, agreed. He was speaking in plural." Fox said. "Wolf, get him to sick bay. Those scratches are deep."

Wolf nodded and stood, cradling Jesse to his chest, feeling helpless. Jesse was a member of his pack, someone he loved very much and desperately wanted to protect. But here was Jesse, hurt, in shock, by something Wolf couldn't protect him from. Wolf sighed, grooming some of the blood away from the cuts on Jesse's temple automatically as he walked into Sick Bay.

"I wish you wouldn't do that." Fussed the robot there, watching as Jesse was laid down on the table, unresponsive, barely conscious. "Instinct or not, it's a wonderful way to pass disease."

"If we have a disease it's your fault in the first place, Dr. ROB." Wolf set his hands on his hips.

"Very funny." The robot made a grumbling noise, turning Jesse's head to look at the cuts. "The cuts won't need stitching, but he won't be so pretty for a while."

"Jesse? Can you hear us?" Wolf asked, moving a finger back and forth in front of Jesse's barely-open eyes, not getting a response.

The robot paused. "His brain activity's a bit erratic. Whatever hit him was a doozy. He might have the effects of a concussion."

"Jesus. Jesse? Can you talk?"

"Hurt…" Jesse finally said, voice barely above a whisper.

"What happened to you?"

"The… the beast…" Jesse's voice trailed off, and he sighed, eyes fluttering closed.

Wolf shivered at the way Jesse had said that, lacing the fingers of one of his hands with one of Jesse's as he shared a glance with the med robot. "Well… at least it has a name, now."


	4. Chapter Four: Revolutions

Chapter Four: Revolutions

Wolf woke up with a start, muscles seizing up, exposing his fangs briefly as nightmare images fluttered through his mind and disappeared, arms tightening around the smaller form snuggled into his chest. He had absolutely refused to leave the sick bay, and had ended up sleeping beside Jesse. At some point they had cuddled into each other, because his jaw was resting on top of Jesse's head, arms around each other. Jesse was still asleep, wounds bandaged and muscles relaxed, apparently able to finally find peace in sleep.

Feeling something tickling his ear, Wolf jerked and turned his head, eyebrows lifting when he saw one of the Entity's vines, apparently unwrapped from around Jesse and investigating him, not hopping a ride, just looking. Somehow noticing him eyeing it, it tickled his nose, and he snorted at it in annoyance. "A lot of help you were when Jesse had some sorta seizure." He remarked to it quietly, slowly untangling himself from Jesse and sitting up and yawning widely, running his fingers through the thick fur between his ears, noticing he needed to get it cut before he started looking like a surfer.

"Getting up?"

He jumped and looked down. "I thought you were asleep."

"I was." Jesse opened one eye, which was bloodshot and weary. "You woke me up."

"Sorry."

"No, don't worry about it. I wasn't getting much rest." He sighed, sitting up, combing his fingers through his hair. Wolf dug a comb out of one of his pockets and started running it through the mongoose's long hair, moving to sit behind Jesse. "You carry a comb?"

"If you shed as much as I do, you would too, trust me. So why weren't you getting any rest?"

Jesse sighed. "I got caught up in the network again. The Entity's really scared."

"… Oh." Wolf shifted. "When I asked what happened to you, you said 'the beast.' Is that the thing that morphed the GalFed cruisers?"

"Yes. Yes it is."

"What is it, exactly? It looks kind of like the Entity, but…" He trailed off.

"It looks more like flesh then vines." Jesse said, voice distant, leaning back into Wolf. "Right?"

"Yeah. Exactly. And it somehow latches onto machines as well as living things." Wolf rocked him back and forth, nuzzling Jesse's neck absently, dropping the comb onto the bed.

They sat like that for a while, then Jesse slowly stood. "Come on. I need to fill in everyone else on what we know."

Fox leaned on the front view port of the Great Fox, staring out at what he could see of the frame to the new wing. This new, uncharted planet had a very interesting society which didn't understand a word he said, but fixed the Great Fox anyways, building the new wing from the molecular level up.

"So we think this planet's in the grip of the Entity too?" He asked, glancing at Peppy.

"Part of it, at least. Weirdest god damn thing, floating energy fluffs with vines wrapped around them."

"Energy fluffs?"

"That's what Falco calls them."

"… Oh."

"I'd tell you what they're really called, but I can't pronounce it. I don't have two mouths." Jesse's voice said. Turning, they saw the mongoose in the doorway, leaning heavily into Wolf's side and looking exhausted. "Hi, Fox. Hi Peppy."

"Hey, Jesse. Feeling any better?" Peppy said.

"No. Not really." Jesse sighed when Wolf gave up and picked him up, finding a seat and holding him cradled in his lap. "Has the GalFed convoy made any moves?"

"Not recently. They did take another planet though." Fox sighed. "Dammit, I said I'd protect the colonies, and now what am I doing? Hiding." He kicked the wall, snarling. "I'm freaking hiding! I've never run away from a fight in my entire life!"

"Be glad I made us run." Jesse said very calmly and coldly. "Or Hope would be dead right now."

"What?"

"The Beast. That thing that took over the GalFed ships. Really young children can't handle it, Fox. A bunch of Vun children died when the Beast took over that colony. If I hadn't made ROB jump the ship, the Beast would have basically killed Hope from information overload." He rubbed his eyes, ignoring Fox's shock. "Look, we can't fight the Beast. The best we can do is make sure it doesn't take over any others that are connected to the Entity."

"What do you mean? Is it impossible to hurt?"

"I don't know. But I do know it's trying to expand, so anything that fights it is in danger." He rubbed his chin. "Um… Did the GalFed admit anything? Like if they made this thing?"

"No. Is that what you think is going on?" Peppy lifted his eyebrows. "Makes sense, we've already concluded that they released it willingly. But why would they create something like this?"

"Supreme idiocy." Fox said, going to the intercom and calling everyone up to the bridge. "Might as well tell everyone about this. Do you have any solid facts, Jesse?"

The mongoose downcast his eyes. "No… no I don't…"

"That's ok. You've got the sources. We'll listen."

"So they ran?" Commander Pejim sat back, smiling. "That's the first smart move they've made so far. They couldn't have gotten far missing a stabilizer, though."

"On the contrary, it seems that it was able to jump completely out of our radar nets. We can assume that the Great Fox is now in uncharted territory." Representative Brogt shook his head, feelers slicking back. "Probably guided by the corrupt individual they have aboard."

"Are all of the test results clean, though?"

"Yes, and we've found out some very interesting information. You'll need to come to the Chamber for details, though."

"Lead the way, Representative."

The pair wove their way through the halls of the ground base, past guard station after guard station, eventually ending up in the guts of the building, three levels underground. Brogt let the machine scan his eye, then entered the low, circular room. As always, it was very quiet except for the soft whispers of a respirator, and the muffled drip-drip-drip of an IV feed.

Pejim wasn't fond of this room, but he understood the vast importance of it, the reason it was buried under such a large military base. Treasure had to be protected, and in a way, the lone inhabitant of the circular room was one of the greatest treasures they had. He and Brogt came to a halt in front of the bony figure, which hung listlessly against the restraints, once-muscular back legs emaciated, four eyes closed. The alien looked dead, and they would probably have thought it was if not for the slow lifting of its ribcage, as well as the monitors on the wall.

"Good afternoon, Representative Brogt." The voice mumbled, the alien lifting its heavy head and looking at the pair with tired, hopeless eyes. "Commander Pejim? I didn't think you liked it here."

"I don't. But I was told you found out something of interest." Pejim crossed his arms, refusing to meet the unnamed alien's eyes. "How old are you now?"

"I don't know. Old." Was the dull, uninterested reply. "What year is it? What century?"

"You are not that absent-minded."

"… one thousand, three hundred twenty-eight years, ninety days." The alien looked to Brogt, seeking protection from its tormentor.

"What did you find out?" Brogt asked, quietly, firmly.

"The Entity is soft because of its unwillingness to loose ay people, and is therefore easily dominated." The alien's voice got even duller, eyes fluttering partway closed, remembering, drifting toward a time it was happy, then a little jolt traveled through its system, and it was yanked into reality. Frustrated, it let the Beast growl in its veins, reaching out to the growing network. "It was easy, taking the planet. We didn't get much information, there were no central minds on the planets we took, but we know enough to hypothesize. The Entity is no more natural then the Beast, something or someone we have never encountered made it."

"Indeed." Pejim lifted an eyebrow slowly. "So what do you predict is going to happen?"

"You are going to lose."

"What? How can we lose?"

"If the fight with Lylat continues, you will lose." The alien let its head drop, ignoring the pair in front of it once again.

They left, stopping once the door had closed, looking at each other.

"It can't lie, can it?"

"No, it can't. But it can be wrong, and that's what I think it is. Wrong. It's just trying to get someone to rescue it. Let's make sure that doesn't happen."

"So this 'Beast' thing is another Entity, more or less?" Falco scratched beside his beak absently, frowning. "Why would someone go to the trouble to create one?"

"Control. The GalFed can't control the Entity, so they genetically engineered a copy that not only was controllable, but carnivorous in a way. The Beast can take over someone in the Entity because it consumes the Entity." Jesse worked his hands against each other, shivering uncontrollably.

"How are the controlling it though?" Slippy frowned. "Drugs? Conditioning?"

"Who knows, and I'm not sure it matters. What does matter is that the Beast spreads like a virus because it can forcefully take people into its network. The Entity can't do that."

"I meant to ask about that. Why can't it do that? Force people, I mean." Fara said, tilting her head to one side. "What difference does it make if the person's willing or not?"

"Frame of mind. The Entity has to interface with the host's nervous system. An unwilling mind defends itself. Sure, the Entity has the capacity to force its way through, but it would hurt the host, and it doesn't find much point in causing a host damage."

"So it's not altruistic, just sensible."

"Yeah, I suppose so, in a way. But it depends on how you look at it, I mean, it doesn't want to hurt the host in the first place." Jesse looked oddly distressed for a moment. "The Entity usually takes a person in because it likes that person. Why hurt someone you like?"

"So, if we use that logic, we can assume that the Beast doesn't care about the people it takes." Peppy said, sitting back and rubbing his chin, deep in thought. "Which means it'll take what it needs and keep moving."

"The thing is, where will it stop? When the Entity's been wiped out? Do you suppose the GalFed has good enough control over the Beast to make it stop?" Katt asked. "I'm not sure we can make that gamble."

There was another long silence, then Drax spoke up, leaning on the view ports and staring out. "Maybe I'm the first to see this possible link, but… we were forced from our homes because of a weapon that could destroy a planet. Recently, we have seen the GalFed wreck a planet, release an intelligent virus, and forcefully take over a planet, killing a bunch of children in the process." He turned to look at everyone. "Correlation?"

"We know that our race was possibly involved in the planet-wreckers, Drax." Jirest finally said. "Is that what you're hinting at? It isn't like the Rekuva run the GalFed, not hardly."

"No, what I'm saying is that things haven't gotten better since your ancestors carved some ugly, hateful words in stone pillars. Looks to me like they've gotten a lot worse." The mouse sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Not that I'm saying anything about you and Wrin, Jirest, I'm thinking maybe it's all been behind the backs of everyone."

"Corrupt government. Yay." Slippy said. "Which means we do what?"

"Hey, I'm a reporter. You guys are the heroes, here."

"We go back to Alpha." Fox suddenly said, bringing up the nav charts. "From there, we talk to Andross, get him working on a cure for the Beast." He held up a finger. "Not a dissembler, a cure, to get those trapped free. Politics is all in the wording."

"And if he can't find something out?" Falco lifted an eyebrow.

"That's why we'll be hitting the GalFed to find out everything we can about the Beast." Fox looked around at everyone for approval. "If the GalFed's gone corrupt, then I have no problem with going underhanded to help those we said we'd protect at all costs."

There was a long silence, during which everyone nodded in agreement, one after the other. ROB took this as a cue, notified the fluffs, and put the ship into warp.

"Ok, so what's the first move?" Wolf asked, spreading star charts on the kitchen table, moving bowls out of the way to do so. Knowing this talk would probably last most of the warp, everyone had grabbed their favorite snacks.

"Well, I'm willing to bet all these political boundaries are nixed." Peppy said, tapping the color streaks. "The FAKK order is basically cancelled… so now, the Fringe belongs to the Beast. The Rinaldi have shut their doors to anyone except Lylatians, and the GalFed are saying that if things don't calm down soon…"

"Namely us, I assume?" Fara said, rolling her eyes and helping herself to some chips.

"… they're going to start military law." He finished, accepting a carrot stick from Slippy. "Which Alpha would be pressed under, because the GalFed is claiming we don't have an effective government yet."

"Odd, considering your government seems a lot more effective then the GalFed ever was." Wrin slicked her antennae back. "Look, um… don't we have to stop once to cool down somewhere in the middle of this trip?"

"Yeah, true enough. Lylatian engines need a break every now and then, and this is one hell of a long warp." Jesse said. "Which is an interesting problem, considering we're warping through what could be considered hostile territory… but once we're off the Fringe, we should be reasonably safe."

"I've been meaning to ask. Is the GalFed still officially trying to wipe us out?" Fox asked, looking at Wrin and Jirest.

"If they are, it's covert." Jirest replied. "We haven't heard anything like that."

"Considering their most recent moves, I would not be surprised if they did to try to take us out without anyone noticing." Falco grumbled.

"Which would screw their relationship for good with Lylat." Fara pointed out. "Though that's more a problem for us then them right now, but the loss of an ally is the loss of an ally."

"And if they stopped trying to support our colonies and suddenly started fighting with us, the Rinaldi would jump on them because we're an endangered species, et cetera, et cetera." Drax sighed. "So where are we going to stop to cool down?"

Jirest looked at the map, where a line of candy showed the current flight trajectory. The line was diminishing, as Katt was snagging pieces one at a time. He traced the line with a finger, glancing at each of the colored dots that represented systems, then finally pressed his fingertips down next to one. "We should be able to stop here without trouble."

"Colonization planet or core planet?" Wolf asked, setting a bowl of popcorn in the center of the table, which Jesse snagged.

"Colonization planet that became a core planet for the Vun, pretty much only them there." He hemmed and hawed for a second, then said, "I guess the closest translation for the name is Party Circle."

Falco snickered. "Why call a planet that?"

"The Vun classically set their cities up in a circular formation." Wrin shrugged. "Party Circle was set up by a bunch of rich Vun children wanting to start their own cities, and somehow managed to pull it off without much help."

"A frat world. Groovy, as Bill would say."

The intercom beeped softly, then ROB's voice remarked. "Fara, Hope just woke up."

"Thanks ROB. Be right back guys." Fara slipped out of the room, and came back a few minutes later with Hope, sitting back down and trading the little girl off to her father, who put his bowl of popcorn on the table and out of reach.

"Ok, so we've got a spot to cool down, what's our move once we get to Alpha?" Jesse asked. "I understand about bringing Andross in, that's a great idea, but how are we going to go about digging around for information ourselves? It's not like the diplomats are going to know a bloody thing."

"Politically, we probably won't be able to find anything out." Peppy said.

Fox sighed and sat back, rocking Hope in his arms, staring down at his daughter, who reached up and grabbed his nose, babbling happily. That just made him feel worse. He knew what was right and was fairly sure about what they'd have to do to stop the GalFed, but it wasn't going to be pretty. At all. Something he had figured out before the war was that corrupt governments couldn't fix themselves. Generally, you had to go remove most of the problem and let appropriate people fill in as needed. The problem was, the GalFed was huge.

He sighed and pushed that back in his mind. Beat the GalFed into shape later, he decided, the current problem was the Beast. "Well, if we want to deal with the Beast, we'll have to find out who made it. That said, I'm not sure where to start."

"We'll dig around." Jirest said, Wrin nodding agreement. "But the chances of us finding anything…"

Fox held up a hand. "If two or more planets get sucked in by the Beast, I'll track down the closest high-ranking GalFed official, put the end of my gun between his eyes, and demand to know. I said I'd try to protect the colonies, and now I'm being forced to let them down. I'm through being nice."

Falco grinned, thumping his fist down on the table lightly. "Amen to that."

"So, they're on the way back, eh?" Bill said, lifting an eyebrow at General Pepper, who gazed back. Pepper, for all the stress in his life, looked relaxed.

"So it seems. Fox said they couldn't face what they had run up against, and had given up for the time being." He hesitated. "Listen, Bill, we have reason to believe that we may loose the support of the GalFed very soon. How well do you think we could defend Alpha, Beta, and the Hub?"

Bill blanched. "Well, uh. I'm not sure. Given the population of Lylat has only about one thousand five hundred awake, the chances of us being able to defend aren't all that high… at least from a large force. General, why would the GalFed dump us? They've been pretty nice so far. Why turn against us now?"

"Well, you know they've barred us from Talar'Dan'i'. Now Fox is constantly locking horns with them out on the fringe, and it sounds like the Great Fox is pretty much outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched in general. They've already had to run once." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Fox is struggling against the wipe-out of the colonies, and in the process he pretty much got the Great Fox in the number one spot for being wiped out by the GalFed. I don't know many details. The most recent problem is that they've apparently run into some genetically engineered virus that can attack ships." He rubbed his hands through the fur between his ears, looking tired. "Bill, I feel old. I remember when we didn't have to worry about all this genetic crap. Bioweapons used to mean diseases, not something with too many arms that would storm across the lines and eat you alive."

Bill laughed at this. "So, how sure are we that we'll end up attacked?"

"We have no idea, but things are probably going to go to hell pretty damn soon."

The Great Fox snapped into normal space in orbit around Party Circle, engines winding down. Peppy saw ROB nod and started broadcasting a message the team had decided on earlier, explaining that they had come into orbit to cool their engines and that they would be gone within an hour's time. There was a pause, then the planet's main communications tower answered.

"Greetings Lylatian cruiser, welcome to Party Circle. Take as much time as you need. There isn't anyone following you, is there?"

"Not that we are aware of." Peppy replied, blinking.

"Good. We've heard about the problems on the Fringe. Party Circle supports you."

Fox tilted his head to one side, turning on his headset. "This is the Commander of the Great Fox. Why is that? We're in it deep with the GalFed, I doubt they'll be all that nice to any supporters we have."

"You are not the one taking our colonies away from us, Commander." Replied the Vun voice very quietly. "We'll send up some maintenance crews to check your ship, if you like."

"No, no. We just had everything fixed. Thank you, though."

"It's an honor."

"GalFed sounds like it's ready to come down." Falco remarked around his coffee mug as he took a drink. "They've lost the Rinaldi, and now it sounds like the Vun is getting ready to bug out too. If that happens, what does that leave, the Rekuva?"

"And the Melkoson." Wrin said. "Don't worry if you've never heard of them, they're pretty rare. They only have two planets to call their own, deep in the GalFed territories."

"Falco, I don't care how much you were into anarchy when you were younger, we're not going to take down the GalFed right now." Fox frowned. "The first order of business is the Beast."

Falco sighed, rolling his eyes. "God, it is so obvious you didn't read the books I gave you… Look, we don't need to do the take down. We just need to get everyone else up-at-arms enough to do it themselves." Seeing everyone looking at him, he threw his hands up. "Is it so strange that I read political books?"

"Um. Yes?" Jesse said, eyebrows lifted.

"Screw you."

"No thanks."

"I'm not sure starting a massive system-wide rebellion would be the best idea right now." Slippy protested. "I mean, everything's a big enough mess as it is…"

"It'll become a bigger mess if something isn't done." Jirest said. "Not that I'm sure I agree with Falco, but this isn't going to get better, it's going to get worse before it's done."

"That's how it always goes." Wolf said, rubbing along the bottom of his muzzle thoughtfully, looking at Fox. "What say you, boss?"

Fox was deep in thought, fingertips pressed together, frowning to himself. "I admit that removing the GalFed from power was on my agenda of things to do, and if I don't have to lead that move, hey, less stress on me. I'm trying not to hate the GalFed, I really am, but if the deployment of the Beast caused the death of children…" He trailed off, eyes closing, and sighed. "Let's test the waters first. Peppy? Can you see if whoever-the-hell is in charge of Party Circle would be willing to have a brief face-to-face meeting?"

The Vun, a middle-aged male, glanced around the sharp-edged docking bay uneasy, but managed a smile when a pair of Rekuva arrived. "What's the occasion? Why would a Lylatian Commander want to speak to us?"

"It's political. Follow us."

The Vun did, smoothing its feathers and clothing absently. "I've never met a Lylatian before… only heard about them on the news and such."

"They're a widely diverse people." Jirest replied, smiling a bit as he walked. "Don't worry. They're not dangerous, generally."

"Generally?" The Vun, named Gerak, echoed.

"Don't threaten their home, friends, or family, and they aren't dangerous."

"Makes perfect sense…"

Fox, who had been standing at the window of the observation deck, smiled when the trio came in. "Thank you Wrin, Jirest. You must be Gerak, I take it?"

"Yes, yes I am. You're Commander McCloud?"

"Call me Fox." Fox sat and gestured for Gerak to. "Pardon our lack of formality, we don't have a formal meeting room. It was either this, or the bridge."

"No. That's fine." Gerak assured him, looking out at Party Circle, then back at the Lylatian, studying this new creature. Fur like rusted steel, clear intelligent eyes, a slender muzzle full of sharp teeth that showed just slightly during speech. Five slender fingers, and a long fluffy tail that moved slightly, apparently a form of body language. "Now, what's the occasion? What's so important that we couldn't talk about it on the radio?"

"How much do you know about what's happening on the Fringe?" Fox asked very quietly.

He blanched. "Not much. Only what's been broadcasted, which as I understand is what you've broadcasted."

"All right, well, this might be hard to believe, but this is all true as far as we know."

The Vun listened, stunned, as Fox filled him on the recent events in the Fringe. The death of the children hit the hardest, Gerak turning a few shades lighter and shivering. He wanted to believe that this new alien was lying, but knew that Fox wasn't. The honesty he spoke with was plain, in his voice, in his eyes. Not ten hours before, a GalFed representative had arrived to assure them their colonies were fine, and even though all of Party Circle knew it was a lie, they hadn't been able to prove it in any way. Now they had proof. Toward the end of the explanation, Fox had ROB pull up the tape they had of the Beast consuming the wing of the Great Fox before it was jettisoned, and the Vun had pressed back from the screen, all six eyes wide.

"The thing is, we've been seeing evidence of a corrupt government for a while now." Fox said, closing up the explanation. "We don't have the muscle or the political influence to force any large changes, and we've got a target to hit before we can even try to do so. We've got to try to get rid of the beast before anything else happens."

Gerak nodded, rubbing at water dripping from his many tear ducts. "What do you want from me, Fox? I'm at your command."

Fox looked away. "Spread the word. Shut the GalFed down by sheer force of the public. The slower they can move, the faster we can."

The Vun nodded, standing. "All right. I'll put in a word to the other core planets, announce to Party Circle that we're closing to GalFed forces for the time being. They've been lying through their teeth for a while..." He sighed. "I'm sorry we can't support you in fights."

"No, that's all right. We don't expect you to fight our battles. We only expect you to fight your own." Fox stood, escorting Gerak to his shuttle. "Thank you. We're probably going to need all the support we can get."

Gerak smiled grimly. "I'll get you as much support as I can."

"Thanks, again."

The Great Fox's arrival back at the Hub was quiet, mostly due to the fact that the High Command covered for them immediately, having them dock in the highest security hanger that could handle the Great Fox, apparently they were still telling the GalFed that they had no idea where the trouble-making Lylatian cruiser was.

Fox sighed in relief once the cruiser had docked, going limp in his command seat. The second half of the journey had been tense, passing through a bunch of dangerous territory, very possibly saved only because of the fact that they had been in warp, impossible to catch. Before they had left orbit around Party Circle, Gerak had been nice enough to tell them that they'd been announced as a red alert in the GalFed—IE, search and destroy. What had tipped off the GalFed off, they didn't know, but the GalFed was now telling everyone they were a renegade military group, creating trouble for no good reason.

"You look exhausted, Fox." Wolf perched on the arm of his command seat, tilting his head to one side as he looked at his leader. Fox had marks under his eyes now, showing through the fur, like purple bruises. It was obvious he hadn't gotten sleep in a while, but no one had.

"I am. I'm glad I'm going to be able to sleep the next half-day or so. If I had to be subject to any of these high-IQ discussions I'd probably fall asleep immediately." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "So what are you going to do while we wait?"

"I'm going to be in a medtank most of the time." Wolf replied dryly, smiling when Fox looked at him. "I'm going to get my cybernetics finished up. They're not supposed to be bare metal like this, I'm supposed to have synfur covering it so you can't tell it ever happened. I'll have one eye that'll look like I'm in the borg, because the iris will be silver, but what the hell…"

Fox grinned. "Sounds like a plan to me. Looking forward to seeing you done then."

Wolf nodded, sliding off the arm of the chair after nuzzling one of Fox's ears absently. "Don't get too tangled into politics. You need sleep."

"Do you ever give up?" Fox asked dryly as Wolf walked to the door.

Wolf glanced over his shoulder. "Hell, Fox. I never even started. Hug Fara for me." And with that he was gone, closing the door behind himself.

Fox sighed, whacking his head into the seat, staring at the ceiling. "Jesse, please get out of the Entity soon. For his sake…"

"New map's out." ROB commented, voice echoing through the intercom, and everyone perked up, sitting around the kitchen table, shuffling through an avalanche in paper. As allegiances shifted, suddenly documentation was turning up, most of it printed and boxed, handed to them by Hub personnel who clearly hadn't much a clue what was going on. The grand majority was useless, but they had a slowly growing stack that was to their advantage, documentation of genetic experiments and other underhanded business conducted by the GalFed. Wolf was still absentee, and Jesse was as well, waiting for Wolf to wake up. No one argued, and in the mean time Bill was often around.

"Anything of interest?" Katt asked, swirling cocoa in her mug absently, watching marshmallows dissolve.

"Interesting doesn't cut it. Get up here now." The tense tone of ROB's voice made the intercom crackle, and Fox stood, nodding toward the door as he did. ROB wasn't kidding, but he almost never did.

By the time they arrived, the map was already hanging in the darkened bridge. All of the colors had been rearranged. The Fringe was closed GalFed territory, no traffic allowed in or out. The Rinaldi's planets were an odd shade of flashing silver, neutral and not talking to anyone. And a new color, growing in a wide swath and some spots, encompassing Alpha and many other planets. The color of danger, of what the GalFed considered a threat to their existence. No flashing colors to signify declared war or a FAKK territory, just a threatening color.

"I thought we were an endangered species." Bill remarked, lifting an eyebrow and taking a drink of his mocha.

"Apparently, too dangerous for their liking." Drax said. "Do they know we're rallying others against them?"

"They must." Fox said, reaching out to touch the insubstantial dot that was Alpha, hand shivering. He had seen what the GalFed could do to a planet when pissed, and it scared him. He shook those thoughts from his mind, he had lost one home already, he would not loose another.

"Eavesdropping on our radio, maybe?" Falco hazarded.

"Who knows. I just hope they don't know we're here. ROB, any idea how many planets have been taken by the Beast?"

"Four for certain, Fox." ROB replied very softly.

He curled his hands into fists, turning his face away from the map, away from the accusing dots of color that he had sworn to protect, only to fail. "Be ready to go as soon as Wolf gets back. I don't think we can delay any longer."


	5. Chapter Five: No Leaf Clover

Chapter Five: No Leaf Clover

Wolf lifted his head slowly, and yawned, pushing himself off the thin capsule bed and popping his neck absently. According to his watch, he'd been asleep about 36 hours, which was consistent with what Andross had told him. The med capsule, which had eased him into a deep, dreamless cool sleep, had popped open on its own, but it was supposed to.

He was rubbing his neck one-handed when he paused, looking down at his arm. No metal, just fur, living fur. He trailed his fingers through it, smiling when he could actually, really feel it. Synfur and programs, he knew, but god, it felt real. He rubbed his ear and felt the fur there, twisting his ears around, grinning when he felt the mechanical one, now stripped to a light frame, easily bend like his living one.

He bounced to his feet and found a mirror, and blinked. He was fuzzy, haloed in loose hair. His hair was down past his shoulders, and he was leaving a trail of fur. He shook out vigorously, combing his hands through his real fur. The accelerated healing processes of the med capsule normally had this effect on fur, making winter coats grow in or shed out, making hair grow faster. By the time he was done, he had filled a trash can, stripping down and brushing himself out as well as he could, then pulling the sweat shorts back on and staring at himself, but this time for other reasons.

Whatever Andross had told the med capsule to do to him had stripped four or five years off his appearance. His scars had faded back, his hair was long, no blind eye, no notched ears. All of that painful wear and tear, the crash, the beatings from Leon… erased. No physical evidence that could be seen without special equipment, except for the one artificial eye, the iris of which was silver.

"Holy crap. I look as young as Fox is." He heard himself say numbly, tracing the tribal tattoos on his one arm. Another thing to thank Andross for… speaking of which, how had Andross done this? The fur shedding was normal, but not this. He had never heard of a med capsule causing retroactive aging. Never. After staring at his reflection for a long time, Wolf pulled on a robe without tying it, and slowly stepped out of the private room, looking for an explanation.

Jesse was curled up on a couch just outside the door, covered in a thin hospital blanket. The lights were dim, apparently it was late enough that no one was around. He crouched down by the couch, brushing his hand over Jesse's cheek, pushing the hair out of the way. "Jesse?"

"Mmn." He woke up with a start, blinking wide-eyed at Wolf, silhouetted by the light coming from the room he had just left. "Wolf?" Then Jesse was in his arms, face buried in his neck. "Thank god, thank god… I know its standard, but I was so worried that something would go wrong…"

Wolf rocked his younger love automatically, murmuring softly. "I'm all right, Jesse. In fact, I'm better then you probably ever imagined."

"What?"

Wolf set Jesse on the couch and stood, flipping the lights on, taking a strange delight in the blank incomprehension that crossed the young genius' face. He dropped the robe to the floor and spun, showing himself off. "This is a little strange, I look so different, I mean I didn't recognize myself, not with a working realistic eye, not without my scars."

"And the hair. The hair is a nice touch." Jesse said, swallowing, not trying to cover his stare. In a day and a half, Wolf had gone from battered, rugged soldier to flawless silver god. Well, not flawless, a long scar crossed his stomach at an angle, and the faint line of where his flesh and robotics connected was visible, but it seemed to sweeten the deal, made it real.

"Kinda long isn't it?" Wolf reached up and pulled some around to look at it, the peppered silver strands gleaming in the harsh white florescent lights. "Should I get it cut?"

"Sweet Jesus, no." Jesse heard himself blurt, blinking when Wolf laughed, flopping on the couch next to him and yawning. "You're still tired?"

"No, but you are." Wolf pulled Jesse to his chest, snuggling down and wrapping both in the blanket, lazily nuzzling Jesse's ears as the mongoose trilled happily. "You've been working yourself to the bone trying to help us fight the Beast. Go to sleep."

"The doctors…"

"Andross will probably arrive in the morning, and the worst we'll get from him is an eye roll. Sleep, Jesse. Talk later."

"Wolf's up and around. He'll be here as soon as he gets the go-ahead from the doctors." Peppy remarked, scrambling eggs. He could cook, no where near as good as Wolf, but it was something, and someone had to make sure the other crew members ate.

"That's good then." Fox said, buttering a croissant absently. "The poor General is lying through is teeth about us to the GalFed, who are becoming a bit suspicious about the fact that we've been off radar this long. They figure we're either in unmapped territory, or here, and apparently they're betting on here."

"Great." Falco rubbed his eyes. "Like we need to give them an excuse to blow the Hub apart."

"Exactly. We've got to figure out a way to get out of here on the sly. They've got probes at the edge of our territory, they'll know the minute we leave." He moaned. "I hope after all this I get to take a vacation."

Peppy chuckled softly, passing bowls of eggs out absently. "That's all of us. I'd like to get a house built, have a garden, and breathe some real air. Any of you notice that the trees have purple leaves on Alpha?"

Fara nodded, smiling. "And cinnamon grass. Beautiful…"

"We've been on a ship too long." Katt remarked.

Drax walked in, pixie sticks holding his hair in a bun, looking a bit dazed. Everyone looked at him and burst into laughter, shaking their heads.

"Bill accosted you, I take it?" Katt lifted her eyebrows, taking a sip of her coffee.

"I suppose so. All I saw was a grey blur, then I'm sitting on the floor with my hair up." He reached back, taking his hair back down and staring at what was in his hand. "Pixie sticks?"

Falco laughed again. "Bill's a sugar nut."

"Hey, there's worse. He was a stoner all through his junior year of high school." Fox sighed. "I'm glad he pried himself out of that."

"Wolf just arrived in the bay." ROB's voice remarked, sounding shocked. "He's on his way to the Galley now."

"Thanks. What's wrong?"

"You'll see in a moment, if you don't get cardiac arrest."

The people in the galley exchanged confused looks. "Should we take that to mean whatever Andross did didn't go well?" Katt finally asked, sounding mystified.

"We're going to find out in about ten seconds." Fox replied, hearing footsteps approach, hard even ones for Wolf, lighter skipping ones for Jesse. The door opened, and the confusion turned to shock, jaws dropping.

Wolf had gone shopping. The combat boots he had had before, and with it he wore magnificently cut jeans, a pale blue tank top tucked in, and a leather jacket. He glowed, a jewel once rough now polished, a halo of silver hair around his shoulders, younger, different, slimmer somehow.

He grinned. "You like?" He lifted his arms and strutted in, twirling easily, boots making marks on the metal floor. "I lost about twenty pounds of hard-earned muscle healing all the damn scars, but I think it was worth it. I owe Andross a few expensive dinners, even if he didn't tell me and I nearly died from shock the first time I looked in a mirror…"

"What did Andross do to you?" Falco wanted to know.

"Well, aging is kind of a slow disease, and he's figured out that you can reverse a little of it, if it's done by stress or battering or something like that. I had a lot of scars, which I'm happy to say I don't have now." Wolf grinned. "So. How's life here?"

"Need you ask? The GalFed wants us killed, the Hub is being monitored, and we're all needing very badly to get off a ship and be on a planet for a while." Peppy said, offering Wolf and Jesse some eggs. Both accepted. "Needless to say, the High Command is more then a little pissy about the whole thing."

"I'd imagine." Jesse said. "You said the Hub was being monitored?"

"Yes, from our borders. They haven't picked us up on radar for a while, so they think we're here. They'll catch us the second we start to leave." Fox said, sighing. "Which would give them an even bigger reason to come after our race."

"So what are we going to do then?"

"I don't know."

Wolf sat down at the table, and Jesse flopped down next to him, fighting the urge to lean into him. He had been woke up by Andross' rich laughter, apparently Wolf had been having a conversation with Andross, since he hadn't been asleep. Jesse had let Wolf up reluctantly, watching as Andross easily checked over the synskin, making sure everything was working. Andross clearly didn't care that he had found the two snuggled together on a couch, and for that Jesse was grateful.

"Way I'm thinking it, we may just launch anyway, gamble on the fact that they probably won't be able to touch our people." Fox rubbed his jaw, eyes distant. "Not without lynching themselves, politically speaking."

"I think we can conclude that they don't give a damn about the public opinion." Said Katt. "Either that or they were counting on no one finding out."

"They had to know that someone would find out." Drax protested. "The governments of the colonies at least."

"I don't think anyone knew much of anything before we started broadcasting it to the universe." Fara sighed softly. "I think the GalFed has been keeping everyone blind of how they really are."

"That would be the best way for a corrupt government to run." Said Falco, poking at his eggs then eating them. It always felt strange to eat poultry or eggs, but hell, he figured it was no one he knew. "They're probably running dozens of humanitarian projects to cover up the fact that they're doing experimental weapons research, among other things."

"Do you think all this would have happened if we hadn't come here?" Wolf asked, looking at the table, eyes distant.

"Probably. Only the colonies wouldn't have a chance at all." Said Peppy gently.

"I don't want to run again." Fox said, voice flat. "Never again, never from them. Someone needs to teach them a good lesson."

"Why not us?" Fara wanted to know, brushing her fingers over Hope's hair.

"Do we really have the power to do so?" Slippy wanted to know. "We don't have the firepower, the manpower, or the armor."

"There's got to be some way for us to get a better advantage. Some way to get to their weak points better." Said Katt. "Those missiles you used tore their ships apart Jesse. Could we build them?"

Jesse shook his head. "No. The technology doesn't exist to build them. Those were thousands of years old. It was a miracle they still worked."

"Do you have any ideas on how we can get past their armor, Jesse?" Fox asked quietly. "Slippy?"

There was a long pause, then Wolf snapped his fingers, sitting up. "The external armor of a GalFed ship is pretty much the same as the internal walls, right?"

"Sure. It's just thicker. It's like they're carved out of one big hunk of ore." Said Wrin. She and Jirest were quietly listening to the conversations, ends of their antennae hooked together for comfort. "Why?"

"Because when I boarded that GalFed ship, those chainguns on the suit were ripping apart the walls."

There was a long, stunned silence.

"Why didn't you tell us before?" Slippy asked.

"I was thrown in the brig five seconds after coming back. I think I'm allowed a little bit of delay time." Wolf replied indignantly.

Fox looked at Slippy and Jesse. "Can we change out the Great Fox's main guns with big rail guns?"

Jesse got his evil grin on his face, but Slippy looked unsure. "We can try."

"Good, do it. I want to be out of here as soon as possible. I don't want to hear about more planets being lost to the Beast."

"They've got to be inside that ridiculous space station." Pejim grumbled, looking at the images. "They've been off radar for almost three of their days! No ship could stand warp for that long, and I highly doubt they're brave enough to go into unmapped territory." He paced back and forth in the meeting room, which was empty besides himself, the long table covered in pictures and reports.

The GalFed was falling apart, one planet at a time, slowly caving in on itself. Apparently, the rogue Lylatian team had started broadcasting what was going on, and more and more planets were dropping out of the GalFed and allying with Lylat. The Rinaldi withheld comment, but the GalFed knew they would ultimately side with Lylat, and their insiders confirmed that if the GalFed attacked Alpha, the Rinaldi would send ships to assist the youngest GalFed race with no hesitation whatsoever.

He snarled, staring at the pictures, not comprehending what he saw. It was one of the pictures from when one of the rogues had boarded a GalFed ship, sitting against the wall in a huge armor suit, the visor pushed fully up so his face showed. The Lylatians weren't large, and were largely considered to be beautiful by most of the GalFed citizens. This battered soldier wasn't much different, but he had struck cold fear into many hearts in under five minutes.

Lylatians were fiery, full of emotions that seethed beneath their skin, causing them to snap at the slightest thing. They were restless and dangerous, not yielding to any outside superior officers and completely unwilling to give up. Or that's how he saw it, anyway. And the fact that the small, strange cruiser of the rogue group was missing made him more then a little uncomfortable. They couldn't scan the inside of that huge space station, but the bays were all closed. They were hiding something, surely!

After another hour of fuming, he left the meeting room and stormed up to the bridge of the cruiser, which was within transmission range of the probes, off the maps of the Lylatians, but still able to keep taps on what was going on. "Any changes?"

"No, Honored sir…" The officer frowned. "We have been picking up a radio signal for the past few minutes. We think its being purposefully broadcast to the probes. It's looping, so it must be recorded."

"Capture the signal at its start and record it then." He crossed his arms, wondering just what this was. The Lylatians complaining about being monitored, perhaps? Or did they actually know someone was nearby, actively watching the probes?

"It's done sir."

He watched as the image suddenly snapped into place, and recognized who was sitting there, calmly looking at the camera, slouched, fingertips pressed together and tail twitching. Commander McCloud, young leader of the rogue Lylatian group. Apparently getting a signal from off screen, he smiled grimly and began to speak.

"You know who I am, so I won't bother with introductions. I'm calling to tell you that all your monitoring is doing is annoying us.

We've been told that you're trying to dismiss what we've been broadcasting. Hah, good luck. The people are starting to see the lies of the GalFed, and frankly we couldn't be much happier about that. But we're not going to start a rebellion. Right now, we've only got one objective, and that is to stop the Beast. Don't argue that it doesn't have anything to do with you, because we know that it's a GalFed biological weapon, engineered genetically off the Entity. We know you're afraid. We plan to use it to our advantage. But we are not going to be as cruel as you.

If this comes to war, and most of us are willing to bet it will, we aren't going to hold back. But we will have more mercy then you. We will spare the children."

A snarl of disbelief and fury came into McCloud's voice when he said this, and Pejim blinked.

"Don't try to brush it off. Your release of the beast has killed children. That was the final straw. Don't try to call us, don't try to negotiate with us, and unless you want your soldiers dead, don't try to stop us."

The icy voice cut through the bridge. All activity on the GalFed ship had stopped, personnel frozen, listening to the threatening voice.

"You've underestimated us before. It's always ended up with your people dead and your ships damaged. We ran last time. We aren't running again."

The video imagery blipped out.

"How dare they?!" Pejim hissed. "How DARE they?!"

"I'm not sure about the how, but the when is right now." One of the aides said. "A bay of their station just opened, and the ship we're looking for just came blasting out, straight at our probes."

The Commander stared, slack-jawed, as the ship rushed the small recording probes. The probes started to scatter, then the images cut off into static. Destroyed, picked off by the cruiser. Then a large, threatening blip came up on their radar, rushing them, and he shouted to prepare for combat, and when the Great Fox came into view, still at full throttle, he decided to hell with his last orders and prepared for impact.

Fox, on the bridge of the Great Fox, grinned and strapped in. "Well, I think they're scared."

Falco, who was watching the GalFed cruiser engage thrusters and try to back away, smiled. "You think? Told you an ambush would be a good idea."

"So I owe you five bucks."

"If this is chicken, they've backed down already." ROB said.

"This ain't chicken." Drax said, fingers wrapped around the arm rests of his chair so tight his knuckles were white. "They're just nuts."

This would have brought a round of laughter, but that's when the Great Fox hit the GalFed cruiser, the ship rocking with impact even though the forward shields absorbed the hit, shoving the larger cruiser backward. The GalFed ship had of course heard of the Lylatian ship using this tactic to its advantage, but had never believed that such a small ship could have big enough engines to actually throw its proverbial weight around. The GalFed ship shoved back, turning the struggle into a mechanical sumo contest, and within minutes the branch-like wings on the larger cruiser had wrapped the smaller one in a python-like embrace.

Fox gestured at ROB with a single nod. "Shoot just to cripple."

"That's hard, at point-blank." ROB replied quietly, but opened fire.

Both ships rocked, the crews of both wincing as hull plates popped loose from the constant friction. The converted main guns of the Great Fox tore slender, ragged holes through the opposing ship, it took several impacts to break through the outer shell, but once it had the guns ripped apart the ship like it wasn't there. It wasn't until the strangle-hold stopped that the Great Fox stopped firing, boosting backwards to look at its handiwork.

The GalFed ship had been crippled, effectively for the next several months. The wings were damaged, hull shredded in spots, engines no longer running. It looked like a derelict, like it had been abandoned.

"Well, we have a way to defend ourselves now, at least." Slippy said. "I still don't think we'll be able to take on a large group of GalFed ships though."

"Probably not, but we're better off then we were. ROB, page them. See if their radio is still working."

"It is."

Pejim, who was still clinging to his seat, wide eyed, winced when the radio chimed, and wordlessly reached up, hitting the button so it came through. When Fox's face appeared, smiling crookedly and looking smug, he stood with a screech. "You… you filthy savage! Since when do you have the, the authority, the sheer gall to take out one of the ships of the Galactic Federation! You will pay for this!"

"We've always had the gall to." Fox replied mildly. "We just didn't have the gunpower. And now we do. Your ship is crippled, so don't bother threatening us."

Pejim stared back at him, too angry to say anything.

"We're going to page our commanders and tell them not to even talk to you, unless they think you're loosing air. You can call your own people to tow you out."

"I imagine you're not going to wait for them to show?"

Fox smiled just a bit. "Nope, we're going to meet them halfway. As I told you before, we have much to do."

Pejim went on a cussing tangent in his racial language, unable to voice his anger in Galactic Common or Lylatian. Fox only blinked, leaning back and listening, looking at ROB. ROB only shook his head, printing the text "you don't want to know" to Fox's screen.

About twenty seconds into it, Wolf stood and leaned on the back of Fox's chair, looking at Pejim. "Shut UP." He said in an irate voice. "Because while my commander doesn't know a damn word you're saying, I do, and the fact that you are insulting him is starting to piss me off!"

Pejim broke off, blinking. "And who the hell are you?"

"Oh, haven't heard of me? Put me in a metal suit." Wolf moved his hands so only the area around his eyes showed. "I'm the one that you want dead." Not surprised when Pejim gaped, the shrugged a bit. "I am a soldier. I do what's needed to do my job and to protect my friends. So stop insulting my commander, or I'll make sure you won't again." With that Wolf ducked off the screen, smiling a bit at Fox, knowing it was a bluff and knowing it was a good one. But then again, if it all came down to it, both knew that his removal from action would be cancelled if they needed him.

"He hasn't been punished?" Pejim stammered. "Are you insane? He's a murderer."

"He's a damn good soldier. Everyone on this ship is." Fox turned off the radio and gestured to ROB. "Let's warp. Head for the nearest GalFed core planet. Maybe we can pick up some information there."

"Well, nice to know we have a way to take down a GalFed ship." Pepper said, striding down a corridor of the Hub, in uniform, putting on his hat as he walked. "Remind me to smack Fox upside the head when he gets back."

"A pleasure sir." The admiral grinned pacing him grinned, her expression tight. "Goodness knows that the High Command is tense enough without this going on…"

"True. Very true."

They turned into the central command room of the Hub, those there acknowledging their presence but not stopping what they were doing, too busy fielding pages from the GalFed, both from out-system and from the ship that was now drifting, totally crippled, unable to move or defend itself. Fox had remarked to them to leave it alone, and they agreed, commending Fox on his win and keeping only a wary eye on the drifting cruiser. The cruiser had lost no time in relaying this refusal to assist on to their superiors, and now the GalFed seemed set in killing them all with scathing words. Pepper himself didn't care, he had known since the discovery of the Beast that they would be separating from the GalFed. They would in no way condone such an action.

"I have a theory about the Beast." Andross offered, standing. He had been waiting for Pepper to arrive, Batenani sitting on his shoulder, reading reports to him out loud as they both waited. The officers on the bridge tried to ignore this strange spectacle. "I've run some test programs and I think I've figured out how it can be damaged."

"Tell me good news, then." Pepper replied, crossing his arms.

"Well, we know it's been engineered off the Entity, and that it's obviously been deeply enhanced to be immune to vacuum, radiation, and god knows what else, right?" He took a deep breath. "I think I figured out a few ways to kill it, or at least put it out of commission, but each way requires the destruction of the host, be it machine or living."

"Not good. What else?"

"It's just a suspicion, but I'm willing to bet the back door the GalFed is using to control the Beast is pretty big."

"How big?"

"… Big enough the Entity might be able to reinfect some people infected by the Beast."

Everyone on the bridge paused to look at him, blinking when they saw he was perfectly serious.

"I thought that the Beast consumed the Entity." Pepper said, lifting an eyebrow.

"It does. But if someone is fighting, and the Entity catches them off guard, I think someone could shake off the Beast. The problem is, if another member of the Beast is nearby, that person could become infected by the Beast again." Andross sighed. "Keep in mind I'm not completely sure about this, I haven't seen the actual genetic code or anything. I just can't believe that the GalFed could have that tight of control."

"All right, then. Is there any way the Great Fox can keep itself from being infected?"

"That, I don't know."

The Great Fox came out of warp, and ROB cried out when a swarm of hostile craft almost immediately attacked, turning and skidding to a halt, boosting away, turrets turning and gunning as they slipped out of the grasp of the GalFed.

They had been expecting this. Jesse and Slippy had hacked into the GalFed with the help from Wrin and Jirest, and now they had the current deployment order for all the GalFed ships. They knew that there would be ships waiting for them here, and that was one of the reasons they had chose this planet. If it was protected, then they figured it had something to hide.

They circled to the dark side of one of the nearby moons, and Fox nodded to Peppy, who then turned and hit the radio bands, broadcasting.

"They're not taken by the Beast." Falco remarked, looking at the ships guarding the planet. "I doubt this is the planet we need."

"We can still get information, though." Fara said. "And that's what we need…"

"We're working on that." Slippy said, typing away on two different keyboards, switching back and forth as needed, glancing between two screens. They still had an open connection to the GalFed's military net, and the GalFed had yet to notice that fact.

Peppy tapped the head mic, glancing at the radar. They were partly surrounded, but it was from a distance. They weren't in danger. Yet. "This is Peppy Hare of the Lylatian cruiser Great Fox. We are seeking information. We do not want to fight."

"We don't believe that." Said a heated voice, the accent unfamiliar, and a pale green face appeared on the radio, almost featureless save huge eyes with slanted pupils.

"And that is…?" Falco mumbled to the people nearby him.

"A Bylar." Said Wrin. "They're a fairly populous race, but they usually stay out of politics…"

"Well, it's the truth. We're looking for the planet the Beast originated on." Peppy said, trying to keep his voice calm, unthreatening. "We have no wish to attack you."

"We do not know what you are talking about."

Peppy transmitted the video they had. "I'm sure you do." There was a long silence, and he sighed. "I'm sure you do not need this long to think over what I sent to you." He said to the Bylar on the screen, who looked disturbed. "That video I just sent you is true. We watched it, we were nearly corrupted by it, and now we're hunting it. If you know nothing, we'll move on, no shots fired."

There was a long silence, then Jesse made a low hissing noise, curling his hands into fists, hackles rising, eyes going hard and distant. "Get us out of here. Now."

"What's up?" Fox looked at him, blinking.

"The beast is there… it's hiding…" He hissed, voice warped, and he dropped to one knee, holding his head. Wolf was beside him immediately, not touching, waiting for the next shoe to drop. "Get within view of them, I'll show you…"

"What is going on?" The Bylar demanded, seeing the action behind Peppy.

"Our resident member of the Entity says that you're all corrupted by the Beast." Peppy replied simply as the Great Fox moved away from the moon, doing a slow circle of the GalFed ships, staying just within decent view, out of range of the infection beams.

"That's ridiculous! I don't know what you're talking about! Do we look like we've been infected by this… this… ugly mass in the video you sent us?" The Bylar snapped its head back as if it had been slapped.

Jesse stared out the view port and reached out a hand toward the GalFed ships, making small strangled noises. Wolf held onto him, supporting him, worried and unable to do anything about it. Everything that was Jesse was gone from those emerald eyes. All that was left was the Entity, reaching out, voicing pain he couldn't understand.

The GalFed ships ruptured, living branches bursting out of the hulls and wrapping around, whatever containing them gone. The capital ship rushed toward the Great Fox, intent clear. ROB threw the ship into reverse, guns firing again and again. Jesse yelped, and made a grabbing motion, pulling his empty fist toward himself, and the capital ship lost control, the hull rupturing for real as the Beast's grip grew too tight, and the vessel stopped being airworthy.

The Great Fox hit warp as Jesse curled up on the floor, leaning across Wolf's lap, shaking hard, clutching his head mindlessly. Wolf watched the vines spread, wrapping up the mongoose's neck and ears, down his tail, and knew he had lost Jesse.

"So, what happened? How the hell did Jesse make the Beast do that?" Falco asked, passing coffee around. The subject of conversation was curled up in the sick bay, still shaking, still unconscious. Wolf had carried him there, then had gone to his room and closed himself in.

"My best guess is that it's because there's some sort of link between the Entity and the Beast." Slippy said, gladly taking a drink from the just-filled mug. "Which isn't surprising, being that the current theory is that the Beast is engineered off the Entity."

"Well, any way its put, Jesse's not here anymore." Drax said in an odd, flat voice. "He's in the Entity completely. He's not himself."

"A central mind." Fox said, shaking his head. "Dammit! Now Jesse will never dump that god damn hive mind, and Wolf will probably never come out of his room willingly again."

"So what do we do now?" Wrin wanted to know. "We can assume that most of the GalFed ships are corrupt now, willingly or not."

"Which emphases the fact that we need to take the Beast out." Peppy said. "We're running out of time."

"But we don't know how." Katt said. "We don't even know where to look."

The conversation from there dissolved into a debate, pouring over star charts, estimating how much of the Galaxy was now in the grip of the Beast.

Outside the Galley, Jesse leaned on the wall and shook his head wearily, overwhelmed by bewildered voices. When he spoke, it wasn't him, it was them, it was the voice of the Entity, and the Entity didn't understand why Fox was so mad at it. He stood and walked away from the galley silently, hugging himself, tail twitching.

Jesse didn't know who he was anymore. The person he was was locked in a small box in the back of his mind, bound to watch what was happening and voice an opinion, but not in control anymore. The euphoria of the Entity should have made him happy, but it didn't. He was miserable, had been since he had woke up in the sick bay alone. He paced down the hallway, finally hesitating in front of Wolf's door, then knocking.

There was a long pause, then Wolf opened the door, wearing just jeans, barbells dangling from one of his hands, a towel across the back of his neck, hanging to cover parts of his chest. "Why are you out of sick bay?" He frowned, looking at the swirling green eyes that looked up at him. "When'd you wake up?"

"We woke up when you left." Was the plain, painful reply. "Why did you leave?"

Wolf took several steps backwards, barbells slipping from his fingertips and hitting the ground with heavy thumps. "Go back to sickbay." He replied after several long moments, looking away, unable to stand hearing the plural reference from the boy he loved. "Go there, stay there."

"But… but we do not understand. You care for this one and yet you left him. That's not right at all."

Wolf growled. "Go away. You're not Jesse. You'll never be Jesse again. Stop hurting me. I've been hurt enough."

Jesse stepped back, eyes wide. "We don't want to be alone." He heard himself plea, beg. "Don't send us away."

He snapped, snarling, tossing his arms open. "I don't want to be alone either, ok? That's the worst punishment in the world for me, but you're dooming me to it by taking the person I love from me! Now leave!"

Jesse ran, hearing the door slam and lock behind him, confused, the many voices confused, even more so when they noticed that the person that was truly Jesse was unable to stop crying.

"Why did you destroy one of our ships?!" Pejim screamed, lashing out angrily. The alien's head jerked to one side, blood flying up from one of the nostrils. It wearily turned its head back to look at its furious captor, ignoring the blood flow even as alarms chimed. A little medical robot hovered up to briskly wipe away the blood, which was dripping on the metal floor, another drip-drip sound to accompany the IVs.

"It was not my choice." The alien said in a cold voice. "The Beast that held that ship was forced to do it. Another mind told it to."

"What do you mean, another mind?!"

"Just that." It looked away, and was slapped again.

"COMMANDER PEJIM! STOP THIS AT ONCE!" Brogt thundered, striding into the room and shoving the smaller alien away. "It is too valuable to us to be damaged, and you are striking out at it! What has gotten into you?"

"It disobeyed orders, then destroyed one of our ships, killing almost the entire crew, Representative." Snarled Pejim. "And if I am to believe what it is saying, the network you created is not as airtight as you claim."

"What?" Brogt looked to the tired, tired alien. "What did you say?"

"Another mind commanded the destruction of the ship, as well as the revealing of the Beast within the ships." The alien replied in a dull voice. "I could not interfere. It was too far from here, and I was overpowered."

"This is troubling." The rekuva sighed. "Do you have any idea what interfered?"

"The Entity. The Lylatian central mind."

"The kid they refuse to hand over has become a central mind?" Pejim blinked, newly angry.

"Yes, and a very powerful one. He … she? He reached out and touched the Beast, and it answered."

"The corrupt one on the Lylatian ship is male."

"No, he is both." The alien almost laughed at the look on Pejim's face. "Before I die, I want to see sunlight." This was said to Broght. "I have been kept in cages and stasis jars and other such atrocities for over a millennium. I want to see the sun."

"What do you mean? You aren't going to die." Broght sputtered.

"The beast is going to die in thirty-six hours." The alien let its head drop, and no matter of coaxing could get it to speak again.

Fox glanced at Jesse, whose gaze was distant, the mongoose's hands drifting over the starmaps. The team had no idea where to go, so had asked Jesse, who had been wandering the ship, sleepless, alone.

"Any ideas?" Fara asked. She was a bit uneasy about the look in Jesse's eyes, but that was better then some. Katt was thoroughly creeped out.

"We don't have many places we can go." Jesse replied in his odd voice. "The Beast has the fringe, and at least a third of the GalFed systems. If we go to one of our allied systems, we'll only lead the Beast there."

"Where is it originating from?" Peppy asked.

"I don't know, but…" The mongoose stopped his hand, fingers pressed to a sun symbol. "But we need answers… and once we thought there were answers on Talar'dan'i. Maybe they're still there."

"That doesn't make any sense. Last we saw, that planet was a wasteland." Said Falco. "And now it's totally closed off."

There was a pause, then Fox laughed. "Oh, my god. That is perfect."

Jirest, who had just come to the same conclusion, nodded. "If it's already closed, there's no reason for us to look there, logically speaking. It'd be a snap to set up base fast and base operations out of there."

"If they didn't already have some sort of base there in the first place." Said Katt.

There was a pause, then Fox sighed. "Think we should get Wolf's opinion?"

"I'll talk to him, if you like." Drax offered.

"No, we…" Jesse said, frowning.

Drax set a finger to Jesse's lips. "No. You'll just make him mad. I'll do it." And with that he left the room.

Wolf growled when someone knocked on the door, wiping sweat off then hefting himself up, opening the door roughly. Drax lifted an eyebrow, letting his vision wander for second then dragging himself back to the matter at hand. "Working out?"

Wolf shrugged. "Pull-ups. What's up, Drax?"

"We're going back to Talar'dan'i. Everyone else just wanted to make sure you approved of the move."

He considered, mind working over that. "I'm good with it. I'm not sure why they're bothering, I'm out of action right now."

"So? You still have a valid opinion. You're one of the top two pilots on this ship, and a former wing commander."

"True I suppose." He walked across the room and leaned on the view port, leaving the door hanging open. His room was trashed, most of it seeming to be recent.

"Jesse was the one who wanted to ask you about this…" Drax started.

"Thanks for rescuing me. I don't really want to see him right now."

"That's… a bit mean."

"It's not him, Drax." Wolf spat over his shoulder. "I want to hug him and say things but I have no idea who'd be hearing them. Dammit, my personal life does not include the Entity! The Entity doesn't need to know!"

"But he's got to be in there listening."

"Maybe, but he's not the only one, and I only want him, not all the other personas hitching free rides in his brain." There was a long pause, then Wolf chuckled dryly. "Don't tell him I said this, but Bill's probably going to ask you out when we get back to the Hub."

Drax squeaked in surprise. "How do you know that?"

"Overheard him talking about it. He likes you, and he's not so much bi as he doesn't give a damn." Wolf turned to look at him and smiled sourly. "Besides, in my opinion you'd be good for him. You'd probably level him out a bit."

"Well, uh…" Drax shuffled, then frowned at Wolf. "Hey, when did this discussion become about me?"

Wolf laughed out loud. "I don't like talking about myself. Tell Fox I'm ok with it, and to tell me if I'm needed on the battlefield."

"All right." He left the room, sparing glances over his shoulder as Wolf leapt up and caught the bar again, fur gleaming, every muscle showing, beautiful and clearly hurt in many ways. He sighed, shaking his head as he walked down the hallway.

"The only way we will be able to get through those defensive shields is by hacking through." Jesse said, working on Falco's suit carefully. Falco, who was a bit uneasy considering he wasn't sure if whoever was in charge knew what Jesse knew, was watching the mongoose's moves carefully, obediently moving when needed but broadcasting nervousness.

"Are you sure?" Slippy asked, peering down the barrel of a gun, not worried because it wasn't currently attached to the rest of the gun. "I mean, Jirest and Wrin have lower-level passwords, and that might help if they haven't been cancelled, but they wouldn't have access to open the shields." He glanced at the young mongoose, trying not to look at the vines, which always were moving a little, making him motion sick.

"Not completely, but we doubt force would get us anywhere. We'd need nukes, and those were all left behind." Jesse scratched his ear with a screwdriver, frowning. "And even then we don't now if we'd get through. After all, our overly large railguns barely hurt the ships, and these are defensive shields."

"What's the chances of us hacking them, though?" Falco asked.

"We think it's decent."

"That's not good enough." Fox frowned, leaning on a table laden with tools. "By the way, what guns are you loading on those things?"

Slippy held up part of a chaingun. "Rotary tools, man."

"That's just wrong." Falco said around laughter.

Jesse frowned, but shrugged and turned back to his work, slowly finishing the adjustments. "All done, Falco."

"Great, man." He straightened and flexed, moving the arms back and forth. "You going to tweak up Wolf's too?"

"If he will let us, yes." Jesse frowned again, thoughtfully this time. "He has decided to ignore us for the time being…"

"Hey, crack the knuckles and hit the crystals." Katt said over the intercom. "We're about to come out of warp."

Slippy and Jesse exchanged a look, then both sprinted up to the bridge, leaving Fox and Falco to look at each other, blinking.

"Looks like they're really going to try the hack." Falco said, trying to scratch his head and clanking himself in the helmet with a gun barrel. He cursed, then opened the suit and fell out unceremoniously so he could actually scratch his head.

Fox smiled a bit. "Looks like it. Want me to keep you company?"

"Sure."

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Slippy asked, sitting down and bringing up command prompt screens.

"No, but it's the best option we have." Jesse said, also bringing up prompts. "Hook us to an IO for the shields, ROB?"

"You got it." The prompts on the screen changed, and the pair nodded to each other, used to hacking together now since they had been doing in the last few days. Slippy felt more at ease now, somehow it seemed like a bit more of Jesse was peeking through the curtain of vines that separated him from the rest of the world.

In the end, it didn't take all that long, apparently the GalFed didn't have to deal with many digital terrorists. The shields came down, and hell broke loose.

"Apparently there's a ground base set up next to the ruins, which, I may add, are being taken apart." Fox said, checking his gun absently. "We're safe for now, but they're calling in some heavy metal even as we speak. It looks like we'll be in for a decent struggle on the ground too."

"That's why we're geared up, of course." Falco said. "With more god damn sandbag rounds."

"We're not here to kill people." Wolf said. "But I am curious, do we have any idea what we're looking for, or are we just going to plow through?"

"What we're looking for is probably locked down somewhere, probably in a lower level." Peppy said. "That's classic government operations, no matter what government."

"Let's cook then, before something arrives that can actually do us some damage."

The groups split up, those going down to the surface boarding the shuttles, and Wolf huffed when Jesse boarded the shuttle, frowning at a handgun like it was a stray extraterrestrial tentacle. "You're not coming. You don't know how to fight."

Jesse turned the frown to Wolf. "We have to. If your suits break down, you'll need us, or you might get some serious neuro damage. Besides, it seems we have a bit of an edge against the Beast."

Wolf looked away, the head of the suit doing so as well. "I do not want you hurt."

"You won't let us get hurt. Will you?"

"… No. No, I won't."

Jesse nodded, looking toward the cockpit. "Let's go, Fox."

The shuttle plowed toward the surface, scorching through the poisonous atmosphere. Fox itched at his respirator absently, rolling the shuttle to avoid cannon fire, grinning when he was promptly and vibrantly cussed out from the people in the cargo hold. "Sorry, sorry. It was either that or make an ungraceful landing."

"None of your landings are graceful." Falco snarled.

"Any landing you can walk away from…" Wolf stood and braced himself, staring out the cockpit glass at the strange temporary base. The pillars were gone, the temple was halfway gone. "Why the hell are they doing that?"

"Erasing evidence." Fox said, and gunned the engines, heading right toward the base. "Can those things air drop?"

"I can. Falco's a klutz. Go in lower, and we'll cut out a welcome mat for you."

The ground soldiers, who had been watching the shuttle circle the base, were a bit surprised when they saw what looked like huge robots leap from an open door, landing and leveling guns at them. The guards surrounded the suits, and there was a moment of strange, empty silence.

"So, can we arm wrestle this out?" Falco asked brightly.

"Arm wrestle the Beast?" Wolf snorted, looking at the mark of infection. "Let's make Fox a landing zone…"

The suits turned back to back and started firing, the pilots of the suits wincing as lasers pinged off their armor, feeling the biting stings of armor damage.

Jesse, who was hanging out the open door, watched the fight with wide eyes, watching the GalFed personnel go flying, none dead, but plenty battered and hurt from the sandbag rounds. Fox started settling the shuttle down, and Jesse leapt down, staying close to the suits, finally climbing on the back of Wolf's suit and hanging on for dear life, shivering, the Entity terrified of the Beast but not wanting to leave Wolf's side.

"You couldn't stay with the shuttle, could you?" Wolf asked.

"No." Jesse held on, shaking, and Wolf sighed, letting his guns wind down.

"It's going to be ok, Jesse. But you're cutting off my ammo chains. Find another place to hold on." He looked back, and saw the catatonic, scared look Jesse had first gotten on his face when he had first seen the Beast, visible even around the respirator mask. "Jesse? Jesse, what's wrong?"

"Heart-to-hearts _later,_ guys." Falco said, defending them, then saw how Jesse looked. "What's wrong with him? Or, uh, them?"

"I don't know. Jesse? Can you hear me? Entity? Is anyone there at all?"

Jesse swallowed hard, something was here, and the network of the Entity was suddenly tangled with the network of the Beast. He saw eyes, old eyes, looking at him, he saw a need for release, centuries of torment… the being behind the Beast, now reaching to him through the network of the Entity. He wasn't sure how, but wasn't surprised either. After a few seconds he jarred back to reality, cleared his throat, and whispered, "Down. We go down."

"You sure?" Seeing Jesse nod, Wolf sighed and hefted the mongoose into a more correct piggyback ride position. "Can you cover us, Falco?"

"I can try. Fox, you lead."

"You got it."

They didn't meet much more resistance as they walked through the base, apparently the grand majority of the guards had already been sent out to attempt to stop them. The rest of the people within the base were workers and scientists, which hastily got out of their way as they paced down the corridor, Fox in the lead, gun in hand but not bothering to point it at anybody. The suits clunked along behind, Jesse looking over Wolf's shoulder, eyes flickering multiple shades of green as he watched the scientists, not all controlled by the Beast, but a sizable percentage.

"What, by the grace of the Galaxy, is going on here?!" Thundered a voice, and a Bylar strode over, tall and thin, eyes bright with anger.

"We've come to shut down your project." Fox said, crossing his arms, gun visible. "We don't mean any harm…" Seeing the Bylar look at his gun, he sighed. "It's got tranquilizer rounds. We're here to take out the Beast, by any means."

"What are you talking about? There is no Beast here!"

"The Beast is a genetically engineered creature which is able to take over machines as well as living creatures. It was based upon a naturally existing creature known as the Entity." Wolf said, letting his guns relax and stepping forward to tower over the Bylar. "We know you're hiding something here. You'd save yourselves a lot of annoyance and destroyed labs simply by showing us there."

"We can't do that! Leave!"

Jesse slowly got down off the back of Wolf's suit and walked over to the Bylar, craning his neck to look up at the alien's eyes, swaying a bit, the voices shouting in his mind, thousands of hissing whispers. "You can do that." He said, speaking in the home language of the Bylar, the heavenly singing words echoing down the hall.

The Bylar took a step back.

"Show us where you're keeping the core of the Beast." Jesse stepped toward the Bylar, which stepped back again. "Show us. We will not hurt anyone at this base. Just show us what you are hiding."

"We can't trust you, you're part of the Entity." The words were faint, unsure.

"You can trust us more then you can trust your superiors, who killed from senseless fear."

There was a long silence, the Bylar fidgeting, looking anywhere but at Jesse's ancient eyes, then nodded.

Fara sighed, sinking into the chair and staring at the screens, cradling a sleeping Hope in her arms. Hope's small hands were tight on the flannel button-up shirt she wore, clinging to her even in slumber.

"How long have they been down there?" She glanced at Peppy.

"Ten minutes." He replied, glancing at a clock. "Looks like they haven't gotten much resistance, from what ROB can see."

"That's good. How soon can we expect company?"

"Well… if these are right…" Wrin frowned at a printout. "Within another ten minutes."

"What?" Katt snagged the printouts. "Oh, hell. Where do they get these engines?"

"They must not be very far away." Said Slippy, looking at the screens Fara was staring at. "How many ships?"

"Seven big boomers, by their warp insignias." Katt bit her lower lip.

"Let's hope they hurry." Drax said, looking at the report with Katt. "We don't have a chance against these things."

Falco ducked into one of the corridors, grumbling. They were now three levels below ground level in the base, and luckily enough they had run out of down. "Where are we going?"

"The holding room." The Bylar replied, glancing at Jesse, who was walking peacefully behind him. "What are you going to do?"

"Well, the original plan was to destroy it…" Fox said, rubbing the back of his neck, catching the sharp look the Bylar gave him. "If something else presents itself we'll go with it ok?"

"Thanks. I guess." The Bylar sighed, hesitating at a large security door. "I… don't have clearance."

"I do." Wolf aimed at the electronic lock and pulled the trigger. The Bylar leapt and watched with wide eyes as the locking mechanism was torn apart by the sandbag rounds, then the door was forced open by Wolf and Falco working together. The room beyond was only dimly lit.

"Open, says me." Falco said. "Let's go."

Fox stuck his head inside the room and slowly stepped in, looking for a light switch as the others came in after him. "Lights?"

The Bylar said a command in Galaxy Common, and the lights flickered to life.

Falco took a step back as Fox dropped his gun, the entire group including the Bylar staring at the one occupant of the room. It was a large alien, the type unknown, hanging in a sling so its back legs were barely touching the ground, the points of the huge claws scuffing the metal, the front legs restrained to the torso. Multiple IVs ran to the ET, which were audibly dripping.

"What… is… that…?" Falco demanded, automatically aiming his guns at it.

"The Beast." Jesse said. "The Central Mind of the Beast."

The ET lifted its large head, four eyes wandering, unfocused, until they came to rest on Fox. "Who are you?" It moaned in Galaxy Common, then moved on, looking at the suits, seeing easy targets for the infection, seeing the hearts beating inside, then finally looking at Jesse, who looked back peacefully, not disturbed at all. "You…"

"We are the Entity." Jesse stepped forward and pulled out the IVs with quick flips of his wrist, then moving onto the restraints. "We've got to get you out of here."

"I'll die…" The ET moaned, turning its head to look at the brisk motions of the mongoose. "Those IVs are the only thing keeping me alive."

"You aren't going to die." Unable to undo the restraints, he looked at the others pleadingly. "Help us."

Fox stepped forward slowly and helped, finally undoing the cuffs from the bony wrists, wincing when the sling went and the ET fell to the ground, moaning, trying to get to its feet. "What if what it says is true, Jesse?" He asked, watching as Wolf came forward, giving the ET a strong arm to lean on.

"We will figure that out later. Let's get out of here."

"Fox? Fox, do you read me?" Fara asked, frowning.

Fox landed in his chair and grabbed the radio. "I'm here."

"Take your headset next time, you stupid bastard! We've been worried sick!"

He winced. "All right, all right. Sorry. We're coming back up, and we've got a rider, an ET."

"We're going to have company in about two minutes."

Fox cussed a storm, ignoring the fact that everyone else was leaning through the door connecting cargo to the cockpit, staring at him curiously, even the ET. "We're on our way up. Prepare for jump as soon as we arrive."

"Are you kidding? We've been ready to jump since we picked up on this!"

"Strap down, we're lifting fast." Fox said over his shoulder.

"You got it." Wolf and Falco braced as well as they could, letting Jesse mildly tether down their suits, watching as the small Lylatian took care of the ET. The alien's large head was resting in Jesse's lap, faint moans echoing through the cargo bay as the track marks of the IVs were wrapped up gently.

"You should be scared of me, little beauty." The alien moaned in its own tongue. "Why aren't you?"

"Brothers don't hurt each other." Jesse replied in the same tongue, finishing up his administrations.

"I'm going to die."

Jesse's gentle smile stunned the alien. "No. You'll see."

The shuttle slid into the docking bay, and the Great Fox's engines kicked in almost immediately, the ship blasting away from the planet as the GalFed cruisers came out of warp. The Great Fox continued to race away as Fox joined the others on the Bridge, looking at the cruisers that had just arrived. "Assault cruisers?"

"Exactly." Said Jirest. "We're out of their gun range, currently, but we won't be for long."

Jesse came onto the bridge with Wolf and Falco, all of them helping to support the ET, which looked around with distant eyes. "Are they infected by the Beast?" Falco asked, sitting down and rubbing life back into his arms, still feeling the aftershocks of the suit.

"Looks like it." Said Katt, everyone looking at the ET, which looked back, then frowned at one of the chairs, finally sitting on the floor facing the view ports. "Who is this?"

"This is the central mind of the Beast." Said Wolf.

"Mother mind." The ET said dryly. "Or that is what it calls me. The Beast is not smart, but it feels." He peered out at the ships, shaking his head when they started careening toward the Great Fox.

"ROB, get us out of here. Warp for the Hub." Fox said, buckling into his command chair.

"Not yet." Jesse said, kneeling down next to the ET. "We still have to take care of the Beast."

"Jesse, those ships are going to smash us in less then a minute." Falco said, scowling. "We don't have time for holistic mumbo-jumbo."

"He's right." ROB said, looking at Jesse, hesitating. The back door through his programming was still open. He couldn't disobey Jesse, but he didn't want to get his friends killed.

"Hold speed." Jesse ordered.

Fox growled, standing back up, arms crossed. "Jesse, god damn it, give me back control of my ship! You're going to kill us all!"

There was a frozen moment, then Jesse passively turned back to the task at hand, looking at the ET. "Do you consent?"

"I did long ago, I do now." The ET laughed, a strange, rasping noise. "Immortality is such a curse…"

"That depends on your frame of mind." And with that said, Jesse pressed both his hands to the ET's side. His shirt rippled, and the Entity moved, every vine pulling up, tiny streams of blood left as the creepers were hastily pulled. Jesse bit his lip, shaking hard as the voices in his head started to quiet, the vines securing comfortably onto the ET as if taking old paths. Outside the cruiser, the GalFed ships suddenly came to a confused halt, the Beast being hit with a flood of new information, being taken by the Entity from the inside.

It took less then a minute for the process to complete, then Jesse had collapsed, Wolf catching him and holding the bleeding, wheezing mongoose to his chest. The ET just sighed, slowly standing back up, shifting a few vines then nodding once.

"We can go now." The ET told Fox.

"Jesse's got control of the ship. We can't go anywhere." Slippy said.

"He's unconscious." Wolf said, standing, cradling Jesse in his arms, feeling oddly relieved. Jesse had willingly given the Entity up. "He can't give any commands right now…."

Even as he said that, Jesse's tear-blurred green eyes reopened, looking around blankly, unfocused, mumbling a thread of code then slumping back into unconsciousness.

"He closed the back door. Let's get out of here." ROB said, and the ship warped.

"So the Beast is no longer a threat?" Pepper slumped back into his seat, twirling a pencil through his fingers. Fox was sitting across from him, wearing casual clothing for the first time in what had to be ages.

"Well, the Beast itself is on our side." Fox replied. "The 'Mother Mind' of the Beast is currently in discussion with Andross. The problem is, we're pretty sure the GalFed is going to be a growing threat. We've done a lot of things to piss them off."

Pepper looked at him, and smiled sourly. "You went back to Talar'dan'i', found the Beast, took care of the problem, yet didn't find our answers?"

Fox blanched. "Uh…"

"No, relax. We received this early this morning." Pepper held up a data crystal. "Some sort of thanks from a Bylar researcher on Talar'dan'i. It's a recording of all the texts they've found in the ruins."

He blinked. "Well, I guess I owe him some thanks then."

"Nah, Jesse does. He's the reason why we have this now. Apparently the Bylar was so overjoyed to hear its own language spoken so wonderfully that he did it as a way to pay Jesse back."

"We have strange luck."

"We live in interesting times." Pepper stood and held a hand out to Fox, who stood and gladly took it. "Tell your entire crew to take some leave time, get some real air. We'd like to get some houses set up for you guys."

"Thanks, General. Oh, is it true there's now a huge bar in the Hub?"

Pepper laughed.


	6. Epilogue: Karaoke Night

Epilogue: Karaoke Night

            Jesse sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed and rubbing his eyes. Ever since he had let the Entity go, he had felt empty and lonely, having to struggle to be interested in many things anymore. He had let himself go in too deep, and he knew it, but he wasn't sure if he had had a choice in the matter. Either way, the problem with the Beast was diffused, as was the blocks between he and Wolf.

            He stood again, looking at himself in the mirror. The entire team had decided to go to the Hub's bar together, as General Pepper had laughingly agreed to baby-sit Hope, but he hadn't exactly had any appropriate clothes. He had finally asked Bill about it, who had cheerfully loaned him an outfit. He sighed, staring at his image moodily, breaking his reverie to answer the door.

            Wolf slipped in and hugged him, nuzzling his ears. "You look good."

            "I look like a Backstreet Boy." Jesse replied, leaning in with a sigh, arms looping around Wolf's waist. "I didn't know Bill dressed like this."

            "He's got clothes for all occasions. I think he picked well for you."

            Jesse stepped back to assess Wolf. "Where are you getting the leather?"

            "Katt cleaned out Falco's closet." Wolf grinned. "You approve?"

            "I'll be beating girls off with a stick."

            "You do that." He stepped behind Jesse and ran his comb through the mongoose's hair, smiling when Jesse leaned back into it. "Are you feeling any better?"

            "Not really. Empty. Incomplete." Jesse sighed softly. "I went in too deep, Wolf. I'm sorry."

            "No, you did the right thing, kid. You saved us all in the end. I'm just glad you were willing to give it up." He hesitated. "I'm sorry I said those things. I was cruel. But…"

            "You couldn't love the Entity. I know."

            "I can't love a community."

            "That's a lie. You love Lylat."

            "I'm talking _romantic_ love, tiger." Wolf sighed. "I have a hard enough time letting myself share my heart with one person, let alone god-knows how many."

            "I know. I wish you'd open up."

            "All in due time." He pecked Jesse on the ear as he finished combing Jesse's hair, tying it back in a loose ponytail. "Are you ready to go?"

            "As ready as I'll ever be, I guess." Jesse sighed, looking away.

            Wolf looked down at him, then in a swift movement took off his dog tags and put them around Jesse's neck, tucking the tags under the shirt. Jesse gaped.

            "I thought you couldn't take those off…?"

            "I'm out of action. Look, no matter how down you feel, just remember I'm always going to be there for you. All right?" He lightly brushed his fingers down Jesse's cheek. "All right?" When he got a nod, he smiled a bit. "Now, let's go, the others are probably waiting."

            "Thanks a lot, General." Fox smiled, passing over his daughter. "We need this break."

            "It's no problem." Pepper automatically passed the kid over to his wife, who laughed and cradled the little girl close, making mothering noises. "I know you need the break. Hell, I'm forcing all of you on leave for at least two months." He smiled when Jesse and Wolf joined the others outside the docked cruiser, both dressed casually. "And the stragglers arrive."

            "Give us a break." Jesse complained.

            "Oy, kids have no sense of humor these days." He looked to Jirest and Wrin, standing nearby, lifting an eyebrow. "You two going as well?"

            "We wouldn't miss it for the world." Wrin smiled. "We are both a bit curious about this 'bar.' If what we read is true, it's going to be an interesting night."

            "Well, you guys have interesting timing, it's Karaoke night there." Said Nancy.

            Falco moaned. "Can we cancel and go tomorrow?"

            "No! Karaoke night is fun!" Said Katt, grabbing his arm so he couldn't go hide on the Great Fox.

            "Damn right." Said another voice, and Bill came into the bay as Fara passed over a diaper bag to Nancy. "Shall we?" He grinned after clapping hands with Fox. "I heard you had an interesting time."

            "I'll fill you in over a drink." Fox guaranteed.

            "Which will be virgin, since you aren't old enough to drink." Peppy said, and Fox pouted, making everyone else burst into laughter.

            "Well, we'll let you go. Don't stay up to late." Nancy watched the huge pack leave, smiling. "Thanks for volunteering to baby-sit, Charles. I think I need some time with a kid."

            "Believe me, it's my pleasure. That kid needs to act like one sometimes." Pepper wrapped an arm around her, taking the diaper bag as they left for another part of the hub. "Just don't get any ideas about starting a family, ok? We're a bit too old for that."

            "Whatever you say…"

            "Dammit, Nancy, I'm serious…!"

            She laughed. "Alright, alright. Those two ETs are really nice… did their race really plant the bombs?" She glanced at him, frowning.

            "We don't know. The data's inconclusive, but we've been led to believe that a very long time ago, yes they did." He shrugged. "But none of the High Command can really think of a reason to talk to them about it. A few million years is a long time to hold a grudge."

            "Boy, you look bored, dude." Bill said to the guard who was leaning next to the double doors, apparently being a bouncer.

            "I'm not sure why they insist on a bouncer." He shrugged and wove an arm. "Go on in, like I can deny the heroes of the system."

            Fox rolled his eyes, pushing one of the doors open and going in, tail wagging as music and chatter hit him, the clatter of glasses and soft laughter. When they walked in, several nearby tables cheered and clapped for them, and space was made so their large entourage could have a spot to sit. Falco waved at the bartender, the group settling down into chairs, studying their settings.

            It was, for all purposes, a huge bar and dance club, probably able to hold a thousand people. It wasn't full, but there were quite a few people attending, the dance floor was about half-packed, and the band was actually live, swapping through styles and taking a break when dance or techno came on. As they watched, some girls coaxed their friend to go up on stage, and after some discussion with the band she went into a decent account of a Shakira song, blushing madly the entire time.

            "You're going to sing, right, Wolf?" Drax asked, leaning back in his chair and accepting a daiquiri from the bartender. "Uh, who bought me this?"

            "It's called a mudslide. It's a fudge daiquiri. Alcohol and sugar. It's good." Said Bill with a grin, accepting his own drink. "And since when do you sing, Wolf?"

            "I, um, er…" Wolf shank into his chair and blushed. "I don't really."

            "Liar." Falco said blandly. "What do you sing?"

            "He does a good Elvis." Drax grinned.

            "Oh really?" Fox grinned, looking at Wolf, who sank lower, ears pressed back. "It might be the leather jacket, but somehow I can see that. So are you going to?"

            "Absolutely not! I'm not that good."

            "Aw, come on!" Fara joined in, grinning. "Pleeeze?"

            "NO!"

            "I will." Bill offered, setting an empty glass on the table and licking his lips. "I like singing." With that he stood and bounced away from the table.

            Wolf belted half his mug in one gulp, scowling when he saw everyone looking at him. "I am not singing."

            "Sure you aren't." Said Falco.

            "I'm not!"

            Their argument was cut off by Bill, who had tossed his windbreaker aside, speaking shortly to the band members, who laughed and agreed as Bill picked up a mic. The guitars started up first, Bill coming in later, having picked an easygoing, upbeat rock tune for his choice.

            "One man came in the name of love, one man come and go. One man come, he  justify, one man to overthrow…" By then most of the people had caught on, and voices burst out around the club, many singing along. "In the name of love, what more in the name of love?! In the name of love? What more in the name of love…"

            "Boy, when he drops hints, he drops hints." Falco laughed and shook his head. "He ain't bad though."

            "Naturally not. He was in a band the last year or so of High School, never did anything with it though." Said Fox, nodding along with the song. "Man of many talents, our Bill Grey."

            "No kidding." Drax observed, smiling to himself. "Were you in the band, Fox?"

            "What? No! I helped haul amplifiers though."

            "It's going to be strange returning to a normal life, you know that?" Katt remarked, leaning into Falco absently. "I don't think any of us has had a normal life since before the war."

            "Normal is boring." Jesse said with a smile. "And I've never had a normal life."

            "You know what I mean! I love the Great Fox, but I need to see trees and grass, even if they are oddball colors."

            "Agreed." Peppy said with a sour smile. "We all need a break."

            "Which is probably why you guys have two months of leave time." Said Jirest. "I don't know what to do, personally."

            "Pepper has some plans for you two, if you accept. Diplomatic officers I think. Nothing final mind you." Fox looked at them, and both lit up. "Hey, you'll always be welcome with Lylat society, as near as I can tell."

            "Which is typical for us." Wolf smiled. "Stomp with us, and become family."

            "I will gladly do so then." Wrin smiled. "Should we call Pepper up tomorrow morning?"

            "That'd be my guess. And don't worry about your antenna, Jirest, I think Pepper even mentioned disability for you if you want it."

            "That's good. Much as I hate it, it is a disability." Jirest sighed. Falco reached over and slapped him on the back in support, almost making him spill his wine cooler.

            Up on stage, Bill wound the song up, and got some decent applause. He smiled and wove it off, then said into the mic, "You guys feel like some oldies dance tunes?" When he got a general affirmative, he looked over at the table, where Wolf shrank some more. "Fox? Falco? Drag Wolf's silver ass over here please." This drew a bout of laughter.

            "No. No, no." Wolf protested, holding up his hands when the two mentioned grinned at him. "Touch me and I'll break your goddamn arms."

            "Aw, Wolf. Come on…" Jesse begged. "For me…?"

            Wolf gave Jesse a look that generally translated to 'you suck' and stood, slouching over to the stage and stepping up without much effort. "You're going to die for this later Bill. You know this." He turned up the collar of the jacket, letting the various buckles hang loose. 

            "Promises, promises." Bill passed him the mic, grinning evilly. "Let's see what you got, Elvis."

            Wolf tossed Bill off the stage one-handed, where the crowd caught him luckily, and looked at the band, who looked back. "Right. You guys know any Elvis tunes?"


End file.
